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

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

The failure of the Government to act competently and provide factual information to the Australian people

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

This matter of public importance debate is about the dishonesty and incompetence of the Gillard government. It is with deep regret that I come into this parliament to accuse this government of a pattern of conduct which is not straight, which is not honest, which is not upfront with the Australian public. But it is my job to tell the truth to the Australian public. It is my job to tell the truth about this government, and the truth is that this government has hardly given a single commitment, at the election and subsequently, which has turned out to be truthful.

Let me go through a by no means exhaustive list of the deceits and deceptions of this government. There was the carbon tax that was not going to happen before the election but is going to happen after the election. There is the citizens’ assembly that would happen before the election but is not going to happen after the election. There is the East Timor detention centre that was definitely going to happen before the election but which is never going to happen after the election. There were the onshore detention centres that were definitely not happening before the election but which are happening in superabundance since the election. There is an onshore detention centre coming to a disused military barracks near you, Mr Speaker, as a result of this government’s deception.

There was the mining tax, which was totally settled, allegedly, before the election but which has completely unravelled and dissolved after the election. There was the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, which was going to be adopted, sight unseen, before the election but which has completely unravelled after the election. There was the hospital takeover that was so absolutely essential for the good governance of the public hospitals in this country. It was definitely happening before the election but was completely redundant and unnecessary after the election. There was the cash for clunkers scheme that was so important to preserve the environment of this country and indeed the whole planet before the election but which was swiftly dumped after the election. There was the national curriculum that was absolutely—honest to God, hand on heart and hope to die if I tell a lie—going to happen at the start of this year before the election. Now, of course, it is absolutely not going to happen. Then, of course, there was the tax summit that immediately after the election was definitely happening in the first half of this year and was going to debate all of the big issues. Now it is happening in the second half of the year and it is not going to debate any of the big issues. The summit has become a forum, which has become a kind of knitting circle because of the deceit of this government.

The Prime Minister will not put a price on carbon. She will not be honest with the Australian public and put a price on carbon right now. I tell you what, Mr Deputy Speaker: she will pay a price for her consistent deceits. What we have seen from this Prime Minister is a consistent pattern of behaviour. We have seen it since the election, but we saw it before the election. Remember when the member for Sturt was consistently asking questions about the Building the Education Revolution program? He was making it all up! Nothing was going wrong! Everything was perfect—not a single bit of waste; a model of transparency! Now we know that there has scarcely been a more wasteful program in the history of this Commonwealth. This is a Prime Minister who, I regret to say, is addicted to falsehoods. What about the ad campaign? Before the election in 2007, the Prime Minister would tell us that taxpayer funded advertising was an abuse. That is what she said. But soon the printing presses would be rolling and there would be taxpayer funded propaganda galore to defend the Prime Minister’s pre-election lie.

But it does not stop there. She knows so much about China! This is the country which, according to the Prime Minister, is closing down coal-fired power stations left, right and centre, and yet the truth is it is opening a new coal-fired power station every fortnight to feed its voracious appetite for energy. This is the Prime Minister who tells us that as a result of her carbon tax there will be jobs galore. There will be jobs at the corner store thanks to the carbon tax! All sensible economists have concluded that at least two jobs are killed in traditional industries for every so-called green job created as a result of carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes. She tells us on the one hand that the rest of the world is acting on climate change and that we have to catch up. Then she tells us on the other hand that we have to provide an example to the rest of the world so that they might finally act on climate change. Then there is the fantasy island that this Prime Minister is living on when she starts telling the parliament, as she has repeatedly over the last few days, that somehow the coalition wants to hit people for a $30 billion carbon tax to fund our direct action program.

We heard the Prime Minister yesterday boasting in the parliament about all the scripture she knows. Ooh, yes! Didn’t she pay a lot of attention in scripture classes all those years ago! Well, I can remember one passage of scripture. I might not be able to cite scripture to match the Prime Minister, but I do remember ‘thou shalt not bear false witness’—and she has hardly done anything else in this parliament over the last few weeks. Somehow that must be one of the passages of the Bible that she forgot when she made that little stroll from scripture class to the Socialist Forum. Somehow, as she went from God to Marxism, she forgot that bit of the Bible that says ‘thou shalt not bear false witness’. In fact, I am not a doctor, but I think we are in the presence of a condition, a chronic condition: TDD—truth deficit disorder. That is what we have seen from our Prime Minister in recent days. As she comes into this parliament it is almost as if she is trying to earn frequent liar points, as she lies through question time. I have to say, I reckon frequent liar points would be a marketable commodity inside this Labor caucus.

Let me tell the truth about the government’s carbon tax. It is that at $26 a tonne—and that is the price that the Treasury put on carbon for the purposes of modelling the emissions trading scheme—a carbon tax will add $300 to the average family’s power bill—just for starters. At $26 a tonne it will add 6½c to a litre of petrol—just for starters. At $26 a tonne it will add $6,240 to the price of a new house—just for starters. At $30 a tonne it will add $70 to the price of average annual rail transport in Sydney—and that is just for starters. Let me say this: no compensation is adequate for the seismic shock that this carbon tax will deliver to our economy. There will be 126,000 jobs lost in regional Australia, according to Access Economics. There will be 16 coal mines shut and 10,000 jobs lost in the coal industry alone, according to ACIL. There will 24,000 jobs lost in the mining industry more generally, according to Concept Economics, and there will be 45,000 jobs gone in energy-intensive industries, according to Frontier Economics. It is this cost in jobs and this hit on people’s standards of living—the hit on the standard of living of struggling families who are already finding it difficult to cope—which meant that the Prime Minister had to tell an untruth before the election. That is why she had to deceive the Australian people before the election.

I put it to you, Mr Deputy Speaker: does anyone in this chamber or this country honestly believe that the Prime Minister would now be in the Lodge if she had honestly said six days out from the election, ‘Yes, I cannot tell a lie; there will be a carbon tax under the government I lead’? Everything that this Prime Minister does, and everything that this government does, is built on a foundation of falsehood. It is now a fundamentally illegitimate government which simply cannot be trusted by the Australian people.

Let me make a few observations, if I may, in response to some of the claims that we have had from the Prime Minister and her ministers in question time this week. A carbon tax is not an economic reform; a carbon tax, in the absence of comparable action by the rest of the world, is nothing but economic self-harm. It will seriously damage the Australian economy. Above all else, it will export jobs overseas. Under this government, Australia’s latest export is going to be your job: that is the message to the workers of Australia. It will export jobs and it will damage the standard of living of Australians.

Increasing taxes is not economic reform; reducing taxes—that is economic reform. A tax cut based on a tax increase is not a cut: that is a con. A tax cut based on a tax increase is a mirage—it is an absolute mirage, and yet that is what we are being offered by this government.

Let me give some fundamental economics to members opposite: robbing Peter to pay Paul is not tax reform. Robbing Peter to pay Peter is even less tax reform, and what we have from this government is not tax cuts and not even the rumour of tax cuts. If they are fair dinkum about tax cuts, let us see them in the budget. The hole in the heart of the budget that is coming up will be its complete failure to reference (a) a carbon tax or (b) any tax cuts. This is a fraud from a fraudulent government.

I say this to members opposite: if they are serious about tax reform, they know how it is done—or they should know how it is done, because they have the example of the former government to guide them. Serious tax reform is based on a serious and permanent reduction in government spending. Serious tax reform is based on a permanent policy-induced improvement in Australia’s competitive position or in its productivity. That is the foundation of serious tax reform and that is the kind of thing that they would get from this coalition, should we have the chance. And that is the kind of thing that you will never get from this government—all you will get from this government is the kind of consistent deceit on a carbon tax that we have seen over the last few days.

Not only is this government deceptive but it is a government which is increasingly a shambles. We saw that on the weekend: here you had the Prime Minister doing a half-hour interview on tax while, unbeknownst to her, the Deputy Prime Minister was tweeting about the tax summit. Here you had the Prime Minister of this country saying one thing about a no-fly zone while the foreign minister was saying a completely different thing about a no-fly zone. The fact is that they do not know what they are doing—they cannot even talk to each other. This is not a government; it is more like Wollongong council than an adult government of a decent country.

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

You have to admire the irony of the member for Warringah coming in here and speaking to a broadbased, broadbrush MPI—there are no specifics in it at all—about conviction and about truthfulness. The member for Warringah—the Leader of the Opposition—is indeed a conviction politician. He has a conviction that he should have been Prime Minister and that he should have won the election last August. But he lost, and what we have seen since then is played out before all of the Australian people: that frustration and anger. Do you remember the Mark Riley moment? All of us saw that there, and we see it across the chamber in question time all the time: the anger, sheer frustration and aggressiveness that a position which he believes is his by right should not be just given to him. Let me tell you: you have to earn the trust of the Australian people.

There is no reason whatsoever why the community should trust the Leader of the Opposition. You just have to listen to what he said himself. On 17 May last year in an interview on The 7.30 Report he said:

… 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.

So forget about everything that he has said in here today; he himself in his own words says that you cannot believe him because they were not carefully scripted remarks. There is no wonder that there is some nervousness from those behind him, because his colleagues do not trust him either. He said this during the Howard years, episode 4—it is a great little quote about the Howard Costello leadership:

Inevitably in those conversations you, to give comfort and reassurance to people, probably say things like “Mate, it’ll be your turn pretty soon and I’ll be on your side when that turn, when that time comes.”

               …            …            …

Look, all sorts of things get said in those late night comfort sessions and I’m not going to say that I never said anything like that.

               …            …            …

But it’s one thing to pledge undying love late at night after lots of booze, another thing in the cold light of day to actually do some of these things. And it’s wrong to think that late night love talk is necessarily going to be acted upon in the same way that a legal contract is going to be acted upon.

The Leader of the Opposition in his own words—deceitful not just to the Australian public but to his own colleagues.

Remember after August, when the Leader of the Opposition made grand statements about a kinder, gentler parliament? Remember that we were going to agree that the Speaker and Deputy Speaker would be paired. We were going to change the operations of this parliament. But he said, ‘I think we can have a kinder, gentler polity;’ on 24 August. On 18 September he said:

The important thing in the weeks and months and years ahead is to channel that disappointment and that frustration constructively and the only constructive way to channel that frustration and disappointment is to redouble our attacks on the Labor Party.

That is what we have seen from the Leader of the Opposition: whether it is on the National Broadband Network, national health reform or tackling climate change, his first instinct—indeed, his only instinct—is to oppose. Remember that he said on 3 February 2010 on the Neil Mitchell program:

No, no, we’ll go to the election campaign, Neil, with a list of promises, a list of commitments and we will fund them without new or increased taxes.

That lasted till May and his budget reply, when he said on 13 May 2010:

… the fairest way to have a paid parental leave scheme anytime soon is through a modest levy on companies’ taxable income …

Lasted three months, that one. But, of course, earlier on, when he was actually in government and in a position to do something about something that this government has fixed, he said:

I’m dead against paid maternity leave as a compulsory thing.

               …            …            …

… compulsory paid maternity leave: over this Government’s dead body, frankly. It just won’t happen.

So when he is in opposition, after this government takes action on this issue, he says:

It’s high time this country had a national paid parental-leave scheme.

Of course we remember what he had to say about Work Choices. He says, of course, that they are not going to return to Work Choices, but this is what he had to say on 19 March 2008:

The Howard government’s industrial legislation was good for wages, it was good for jobs and it was good for workers and let’s never forget that.

He went on, on 13 August, to say that workplace reform was one of his greatest achievements. In Battlelines in July 2009 he said:

Work Choices was a political mistake, but may not have been an economic one.

So we know from the whole frame of policy that the Leader of the Opposition is someone who has no vision for the country and is determined to oppose for opposition’s sake. That is no way to appear to be an alternative leader of the country.

But, of course, there is nowhere more critical to his failure than in his attitude towards taking action on climate change. He was part of a government that was frozen in time while the world warmed around it. While other countries were taking action—while the north-east states in the US were setting up an emissions trading system, when the Chicago Climate Exchange was being established, when the Europeans were introducing an ETS—the Howard government, of course, captured by climate and market sceptics, refused to act until the end. We know that the then Treasurer, Peter Costello, in 2002 took an ETS to the cabinet and got rolled. Then Prime Minister Howard refused to take action on climate change until he was in trouble in the lead-up to the 2007 election. He had a bit to say at the Melbourne Press Club at the Hyatt hotel on 17 July. I encourage those opposite, who say they are the inheritors of the Howard legacy, to go have a look—not the shadow Treasurer, who gets it and knows in his heart of hearts that action on climate change is necessary, as do the member for Wentworth and a range of people over on that side of the House. They know that some action has to be taken on climate change. But this is what Prime Minister Howard said in 2007. Think about the current debate that is going on when you listen to these words:

In the face of risk, a prudent conservative takes insurance. We should, in the words of Rupert Murdoch, give the planet the benefit of the doubt given the potential dangers of climate change.

That is a pretty good sentiment. We agree with that. He also spoke about the responsibility that this generation has to future generations. He termed it, perhaps differently from how I would:

The Burkean sentiment—that society is a partnership between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are yet to be born—comes as second nature.

I disagree that it is second nature to those opposite. I think one of the defining divisions in Australian politics today is between those on the two sides of the chamber. We take a view about the long term, whether it be action on climate change, action on the National Broadband Network, investing in education or investing in infrastructure. But this is what then Prime Minister Howard had to say further on:

Now we must position Australia for a low carbon future. We face a major new reform challenge in designing an emissions trading system and setting a long-term goal for reducing our emissions in the absence of a global carbon scheme.

He then said:

Australia brings formidable assets to this challenge: an educated, can-do and adaptable people a modern; flexible economy; world class scientific expertise; deep global engagement and an enviable reputation for institution-building and reform. We have mobilised these assets before and will do so again to help build a new global climate change framework and to facilitate Australia’s transition to lower carbon emissions. No great challenge has ever yielded to fear or guilt.

I ask the Leader of the Opposition to think about that. I say to those opposite that this government will also not be yielding to the fear campaign of the climate sceptics opposite, led by the Leader of the Opposition.

Indeed, then Prime Minister Howard went on to talk about the importance of market based mechanisms and those who oppose market based mechanisms. He said:

They are the real climate change deniers because they deny rational, realistic and sustainable policy solutions.

He went on to say:

Being among the first movers on carbon trading in this region will bring new opportunities and we intend to grasp them.

It is extraordinary that those opposite have walked away completely from that view. It took John Howard a long time to get to that view, but eventually he did get there—in July 2007.

We know that Lord Stern in his seminal report referred to climate change as the world’s greatest market failure. Indeed it is. Because we fail to put a price on emissions, high carbon polluters can emit for free and someone else pays the cost. The idea that it is free is an illusion. The cost is paid not just by this generation but by future generations, which is why this government is determined to ensure that polluters pay and that we use that payment by the big polluters—up to the 1,000 top companies emitting pollution—to provide assistance to households and businesses for adjustment and support for climate change action.

Those opposite want to take taxpayers’ money and give it to the big polluters—$30 billion of it; $720 each. They want to put their hand in everyone’s pocket. The shadow Treasurer said yesterday that they not only want to remove the price on carbon but will remove any assistance that is there, whether it be tax cuts, direct payments and assistance, support for pensioners or support for industry. That is an extraordinary proposition from those opposite.

Of course, the Leader of the Opposition has made a fundamental error, because straightaway he was out there just opposing the price on carbon. The second position he took was that he would not just oppose that but oppose the assistance measures that will occur. And then there is this nonsense about, ‘Put it in the budget.’ We have announced when it comes in—1 July 2012. We have made that announcement, so you can discount this nonsense and windbaggery from those opposite.

The third and perhaps most significant mistake he made was completely aligning the opposition with the climate change sceptics and ratbags. There are people out there who have extreme positions on these issues and the Leader of the Opposition wants to mobilise them in his so-called people’s action—and we will see some of it outside Parliament House tomorrow. He has become a hostage to these climate change deniers and that is why we see contradictions day after day. Last week, within 24 hours, we saw: ‘Climate change is nonsense; the science is not proven,’ and, ‘No, I think climate change is real.’ That was within 24 hours because he is, as the member for Wentworth said, trying to be a weathervane on these issues.

The same person who says, ‘There is no doubt that climate change is real; there is no doubt that mankind contributes to it,’ is just as capable of saying, ‘Climate change is crap.’ Then he has the gumption to come before this chamber and speak about truthfulness and being fair dinkum with the Australian people. Just as the flood tax scare did not work, the scare campaign on this will not work. The Australian people are better than that. They want a positive future not just for them but for their kids and their grandkids. Those of us in this chamber who have had the privilege of seeing the Great Barrier Reef want our kids and grandkids to have that privilege as well. (Time expired)

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As each day passes in this place and in public life you build your integrity, like putting aside grains of sand one at a time, with the Australian people and the people you represent in this place. Over time when you have to make hard decisions you will go to that bank and spend a bit of the good fortune. What we have seen from this government, particularly in relation to the carbon tax, is the expenditure of everything in the bank and a request for the Australian people to go into deficit.

This government from the very beginning, as my leader said earlier today, has engaged in deceit. It has engaged in deceit on a spectacular level. The now Prime Minister wants the Australian people to believe that she has had to undertake this deceitful path because she does not control the numbers in the House, but the truth is that in the caucus minutes of the special meeting of the federal parliamentary Labor Party on Thursday, 24 June, Wayne Swan and Julia Gillard were referred to specifically by the Prime Minister they had deposed overnight. That Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said:

… strong was the advice from Wayne and Julia that the emissions trading scheme policy had to be abandoned.

He did not say why. This Prime Minister feigns significant concern about the environment. I do not know whether she has been asked this question but I think she needs to give the Australian people an answer: why did she in April last year advise the then Prime Minister to dump the emissions trading scheme? Why did the Treasurer advise the then Prime Minister in April of last year to dump the emissions trading scheme?

Now everyone in this 24-hour opinion cycle has a view, but the view I want is from the mouth of the Prime Minister. Why did she advise Kevin Rudd to dump the emissions trading scheme? If it is a matter of such grand principle, if this is the fight to end all battles, the Prime Minister needs to explain to the Australian people why she shirked that fight in April of last year. And the Prime Minister needs to go further and explain to the Australian people exactly why she emphatically promised them not once but twice during the course of an election campaign that she would not lead a government that had a carbon tax—specifically referring to a carbon tax. The Prime Minister was doing that with the full knowledge that, were she to be re-elected, she would rely, almost inevitably, on the Greens for the balance of power in the Senate. That is the second great deceit in relation to this matter.

The third great deceit is the announcement, in the presence of Bob Brown and Christine Milne, of the carbon tax itself. I am still amazed that the Treasurer of Australia, the Deputy Prime Minister, was not there for the announcement of what he keeps referring to as a major economic reform. It is quite extraordinary that the Treasurer was not there. But what is more interesting is that the Greens’ deputy leader said it was a shared power arrangement between the Labor government and the Greens. I wonder what the earlier speaker in this debate, the member for Grayndler, would have thought about that—as he comes to the point where his wife is about to be knocked off by a Green in her seat in New South Wales on Saturday. There is the Prime Minister praising the Greens, and now the Greens are the mortal enemy of the Labor Party in New South Wales. How does that work? Not only is Carmel Tebbutt in serious trouble, but the member for Grayndler’s protege, Verity Firth, is in trouble. If there are going to be those defeats on Saturday, I say to you: Julia Gillard’s unstinting praise of the Greens must have had some impact, because Julia Gillard was endorsing the Greens when she was not endorsing Carmel Tebbutt, Verity Firth, the Labor candidate in Melbourne or Labor senators who have aspired to try to knock off the Greens in the Senate. What a confused web we weave.

It goes further. The government then sees that it is bleeding. It announces a tax without a price. It announces that it is going to exclude one industry, agriculture, but it does not talk about other industries. It is a confused announcement. Out of that we had a great revelation. It was the fact that the government was caught without any clothes in relation to compensation. The government was clinging to the debate about the environmental justification for the carbon tax but it was losing; it was sinking. Along comes Ross Garnaut, who says: ‘Well, here’s the Henry review. Remember this? We’ll dust it off.’ The government adopted three of 138 recommendations. ‘Guess what: let’s grab the Henry tax review tax cuts. That’s the way we can provide compensation.’ At first the government thought that was a great idea and its great advocates in the gallery and great commentators out there were saying: ‘This is brilliant politics. Give tax cuts. The coalition can’t oppose them.’

The only problem was that the Henry tax cuts actually delivered significant financial benefits to people earning above $200,000. In fact, if you earned $300,000 you would get nearly $5,000 in the Henry tax cuts. We do not oppose those sorts of tax cuts, but what we have a problem with is that middle Australia is going to pay more. Those on $40,000 to $90,000 are actually going to pay more, not less. The government went, ‘Hang on; this is a problem. We didn’t think about this when we talked about Henry. Ross Garnaut? Well, he’s an adviser. He’s not part of the team, really.’ So what happens is another thought bubble from the government, the low income tax offset. ‘Let’s pull that out of the can: the low income tax offset, a great idea. We can run with that. That’s how we’ll provide compensation to low-income Australians.’ There is just a little problem. Ken Henry recommended it be abolished. ‘Don’t worry about Ken Henry. No, we’ll get the dust back on that report. We’ll never see it again. Aha—the low income tax offset!’ But there is just a little problem: it is a rebate, so people will be out of pocket as the tax kicks in. They will only get a rebate at the end of the financial year—or, for some, they will get up to 50 per cent, but they will be worse off. Oh dear! The government says, ‘We’re going to give compensation and we’re going to give tax cuts.’

Today, on Neil Mitchell’s program, the Prime Minister was asked repeatedly about the numbers. She could not answer. That is because they do not have an answer. That is because they are making it up as they go, and this is the fundamental point. When we get criticised by some for winding back compensation it is a simple point: if you do not inflict pain, you do not need painkillers. It is simple. And do you know what? This government wants to impose a carbon tax. You do not have to have compensation if you are not penalising people with a carbon tax. I felt I was in another universe during today’s question time, when the Prime Minister was speaking like a modern-day riddler. What the hell was she saying? How confused is this debate that the Prime Minister has led Australians down? All she can do is say that we are running a scare campaign. We are not doing it—the Prime Minister is doing it. It is all her own work. She is the master of the evil. She is the one that is running this scare campaign, because she does not understand what she is saying.

So I say to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, we will oppose the carbon tax because it is bad policy. We will not need to compensate people because we will not inflict pain on the Australian people. This is a government that does not know what it is doing. You have a Treasurer that did not know that John Fahey was going to be appointed. You have a Prime Minister that did not know a Treasurer was going to announce a tax summit. You have a government that is in confusion and denial. You have a foreign minister that is declaring war on Libya and a Prime Minister that does not want to do it. What is going on in the joint? The clowns are running the show. (Time expired)

Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I relish this opportunity to speak to today’s matter of public importance. I seize it as an opportunity—I will see if I can keep the volume up to the same level as the member who has just finished speaking—to put on the record yet again evidence of the competence of this Labor government and to highlight our proud record in these dark days of fear and loathing propagated by those opposite. What we have endured today is just another tedious moment in the farrago of fear campaigns mounted by those opposite. That is right: a farrago of fear campaigns.

This Labor government respects facts and their context. That is why we are getting on with the job of dealing with the pressing realities that we face as a nation—not the myths and mysterious machinations of those opposite who are trying to create some ‘fear bubble’ that will prevent the whole of Australia from moving forward.

I particularly want to point out the facts around our determination to move to a clean energy future for our kids and for our nation. Carbon pricing: it is the hot topic. You want to talk about it? Well, to quote a great Australian woman, our Prime Minister: ‘Let’s bring it on.’ Let’s talk about the factual basis and the reality that we need to face on climate change. Let’s talk about the fact that the multidecadal trend from 1980 to 2009 has been warming at 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade. That is a fact; let’s get some facts on the table instead of this hypocrisy that we are hearing from the other side of the chamber today. This trend has not slowed down during the 2000-09 decade. It is a fact that the decade 2000-09 was the warmest decade on record—significantly warmer than the 1990s, which in turn were significantly warmer than the 1980s. These are inconvenient facts for those opposite, and we have seen them take every political position on this issue from 1980 through to today. They have form in this area, a vacillation: ‘We do believe it’, ‘We don’t believe it’, ‘We do believe it’. It changes quicker than the weather.

Take a look at the spike in the graph of the northern hemisphere surface temperature in the post-industrial age. It is a fact. It cannot be denied by those who attend to facts, but those who want to make it up as they go and change the story from day to day continue to look for signs that they read in the waters or something, about the mythology that they create daily here in this place.

Look at the loss of the Arctic Sea ice. Look at the graph of global sea-level change between 1970 and 2008. Warming of the climate system is unequivocal. It is really happening, guys. You need to open your eyes, you need to look around, and you need to listen to the factual evidence—

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Health Services and Indigenous Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would ask that the member address members by their title.

Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Climate change is evident from all of these increases in global average air and ocean temperature. There is melting of snow and ice. There is a rising of sea levels. This is scientific fact—not science fiction, as preferred by those opposite. It is this government that is taking the action necessary to meet the reality that exists right before our eyes.

In the past, conservatives in our society have been wont to deny science that challenges their cosy little world view. With Darwin and the theory of evolution, Galileo and the fact that the Earth revolves around the sun, Einstein and the theory of relativity: there were sceptics to all of these things. However, these are scientific facts. They are facts that challenged the orthodoxy of the time and they were hotly disputed. As surely as the Earth goes around the sun, there will be those who, for whatever reason, are challenged by science fact. Perhaps they did not pay attention in year 8 science and they did not quite get the concepts mastered. If most of the scientists in the world are scientists who publish in peer reviewed journals, if 97 out of 100 specialists in a field are telling us that something is a fact, it is time to pay attention.

There were people in the 19th century who misconstrued the theory of evolution and insisted that they were not a monkey’s uncle. Just as we had that kind of wilful misconstruing of the facts in the 19th century, we have it as well today in relation to the climate change debate by those opposite. In place of the monkey’s uncle, we have got the modern equivalent in this chamber. We have people like the member for Tangney, who plays games like dunking bits of carbon at the doors. They rail and rant against the increasing and overwhelming body of reputable scientific evidence. It is clearer every day to the Australian people that our government, the Gillard government—in stark contrast with those opposite—is willing and has the courage to act on factual information across so many policy areas. It just so happens that these are the areas of policy failure amongst those opposite.

And so to the matter of competence. Competence begins from a base when you actually get the facts right. We got the awful facts right when we took over from the Howard government and had to clean up the mess that the Leader of the Opposition left in his previous role as John Howard’s minister for health. What we inherited was a completely run-down system from which $1 billion had been ripped out. It was a system that was in crisis due to a lack of foresight and a loss of vision for this country, a system that had been robbed of proper funding and training places for doctors and nurses, a system that was experiencing crises in staffing every day because those opposite could not see the reality. They could not identify the facts. They still cannot; but we did. That is why, since we were elected, we have moved to implement our landmark health and hospital reforms: reforms that will provide better health and better hospitals for Australian working families. This was the most significant reform to the Australian health and hospitals system since the introduction of Medicare—and it took a Labor government to do it. We are not frightened of the big tasks that lie at the heart of leading this great nation.

What was the Leader of the Opposition’s response? As the Prime Minister noted in question time today, the day she forged the agreement with the states, he denounced it before she had even announced it. Carping negativity can do nothing to enhance the outcomes for our Australian people. What a disgrace! These health reforms, which will deliver $7.3 billion in investments over the next five years, 1,300 new sub-acute hospital beds, elective surgery delivered in clinically recommended times for 95 per cent of Australians and training for 6,000 more doctors, including doubling the number of GPs trained every year, were denounced before they were announced. We know the Leader of the Opposition suffers from envy. Perhaps it is the only way in which he is ‘green’. And why would he not be envious of this great government led by our Prime Minister?

There will be better support for nurses working in GP and primary care, aged care and mental health; a national after-hours GP service, with a 24-hour hotline that provides GP advice and can arrange a follow-up visit in your local community; support to upgrade around 425 GP practices and health clinics across the country so that GPs can expand their facilities and locate more services in a single community location; support for 2,500 additional aged-care beds; a personally controlled electronic health record for every Australian who wants one; new investments in prevention, including tough new action tackling smoking; and new investments in mental health services, with 20,000 extra young people per year to get assistance.

This is a small smorgasbord of our competent action in the area of health. It is a testimony to the fact—yes, the fact—that it is the Gillard Labor government that is absolutely acting in the interests of ordinary Australians. Our action is competent, welcomed and determinedly improving the health and wellbeing of our young, our aged, our environment, our economy and our future. When it comes to health, infrastructure and climate change, it is not just an inconvenient truth. When it comes to all the substantial issues of fact that we are addressing as this government, the Leader of the Opposition just cannot handle the truth. He is far more comfortable with—what is that word we are not allowed to say?—denial.

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today’s matter of public importance deals with the government’s failure to act competently and provide factual information. In my own portfolio of immigration and citizenship—to borrow a phrase from the previous speaker—there is a lot of inconvenient truth for the government. In the short time I have available, there are many matters that I could mention to highlight how misleading and how untruthful the government has been and the extent of the failures of this government in this area of policy.

We could go back to the great statement of the former Prime Minister, who said in relation to the Oceanic Viking that there was no special deal. We all remember that one, and we all remember the very special deal that they received on that occasion. Or we could go to another example—when, as recently as this morning, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship told Fran Kelly on the ABC that all of those who had broken out of the North West Point detention centre had been accounted for. But in the Senate this afternoon we learnt that all had been accounted for except for four. Apparently, four detainees here or there breaking out of our detention centre is not something we can take terribly seriously, according to the minister.

This is a government that continually peddle mistruths, misunderstandings and inaccurate information about the scale of their failings. Most fundamentally, these failings and these mistruths appear in one of the most important documents the government publish each year, and that is their own budget. In the budget this year, for 2010-11, the government came in here and asked for $471 million for asylum seeker management. That is a lot of money—and it is certainly a lot more money than they asked for the previous year, which was around $170 million. What was more troubling was that they said that this was only going to be in order to accommodate some 2,000 arrivals this financial year. That figure was exceeded by about December in this financial year, if not earlier. The government then came back into this place for their own budget most recently and asked for another $290 million, on top of the $470 million, to pay for the blow-out in their costs due to the failure of their policy of asylum seeker management in this country. It is now costing $760 million in the additional estimates.

But the untruths do not stop there, because it says in the additional estimates that the costs for asylum seeker management are going to fall from $761 million this year—and this is in the government’s budget—to $239 million next year. So there is going to be a half a billion dollar decline in the government’s budget from this year to next financial year. That is the untruth that this government are trying to present to the Australian people about the cost of their failures in border protection. If costs stay at the current level of $760 million a year over the next three years, that is going to blow a $1½ billion hole in the government’s budget. That is on top of the $1.4 billion excess they have already had in blowing out costs in this area. So the government cannot even get the costs right in their own budget or tell the truth about the real costs of their policy failures.

Then there is the great statement from the government about push factors causing the problems that we are seeing writ large on a daily basis—whether it is riots or boats turning up or the various other chaos we see around the country in relation to this matter. They say that it is all because of push factors and they are not to blame. The UNHCR recently released their figures for the first six months of 2010. That showed that, in the 44 industrialised countries, there was a 13 per cent decline in asylum applications around the world, but in Australia there was a 78 per cent increase. There was a 78 per cent increase in Australia compared to a 13 per cent decline all around the world—whether you are talking about the European Union, where figures fell by as much as 15 per cent, or if you are talking about non-European countries or North America, where figures showed there was an 11 per cent decline. In Australia we defied the rest of the world, and the government say it is due to push factors. No; it is due to their own policy failings.

They also said that Nauru and the Pacific solution did not work. I do not know what figures they are using to back that up; all I know is that in the six years that followed the introduction of that solution the boats basically stopped coming. One day in 2008 they started coming again; that was when they reversed the policies of the previous government.

They said that the Pacific solution was a terribly costly solution. In fact, Senator Evans, in February 2008, said:

The Pacific solution was a cynical, costly and ultimately unsuccessful exercise introduced on the eve of a federal election by the Howard government.

By the government’s own admission in this statement, the total running costs for the Pacific solution at both Nauru and Manus Island was—and you may remember this figure—$289 million. That is less than the government asked for in this year’s budget alone as a top-up. Apparently that $289 million was an excessive waste of money over almost six years; but they spent that in six months. This is what the government says is a waste of funds.

They also say that basically everyone who went to Nauru and Manus was ultimately resettled from the OPCs to Australia or other countries. In fact, they say it was 90 per cent; that is the minister’s favourite figure. But I have to refer him to the statement of Senator Evans:

A total of 1,637 people—

this is while Senator Evans was the minister for immigration—

were detained in the Nauru and Manus facilities, of whom … 70 per cent

not 90 per cent but 70 per cent—

were ultimately resettled from the OPCs to Australia or other countries. Of those who were resettled, around 61 per cent … were resettled in Australia.

Of more importance was the report by Labor Senator Peter Cook about the Pacific Solution. He said:

The so-called Pacific Solution has achieved its objective of preventing on-shore processing of unauthorised boat arrivals. … those who are successful in their claims have no presumed right to resettlement within Australia.

That is why the boats stopped: because we took away the certainty of the product that the people smugglers were selling in Indonesia and throughout the region. That is why it worked. The government does not want to believe this works, but the figures speak for themselves: the boats stopped and the program worked. It has cost less in six years than this government asked for in six months, yet they peddle this myth that they do not want to go back to Nauru.

They also said before the election that they would not be expanding the onshore detention network. They were almost right—except for 4,900 additional beds that they have announced since the election. This is a government that has announced more beds in the detention network than they have announced for public hospitals—and they are apparently the ‘health government’. Maybe, if public patients were able to get a bed in a detention centre, they would be better off. But they cannot get a bed there because all of those beds in our detention network are very much full. This is a government who said they would not be expanding the onshore detention network.

They did say they would open beds in East Timor though. It has been eight months since the Prime Minister stood at the Lowy Institute and said, ‘We are going to establish this you-beaut processing centre in East Timor.’ Eight months and more have passed and we are no closer to it today—in fact, we are further away from it than at any time prior.

I compare that to the performance of the Howard government, who announced the establishment of Nauru and 19 days later it was open for business. So in 19 days John Howard achieved what this government has not been able to achieve in eight to nine months. We continue to see this East Timor processing centre being something of the never-never.

There is also the great deterrent the minister has talked about, ‘If people get a no, they go home.’ On 19 October the minister said that the biggest disincentive we could put on people coming to Australia is, ‘If you are not a genuine refugee, you will be sent home.’ Senate estimates revealed that over a period of two years when the boats have come, four people from Afghanistan have gone home voluntarily. This is the big disincentive and it does not operate when you get to the ground.

Finally, I note that the asylum freeze has probably been one of the greatest contributing factors—other than boats arriving—for this government which has created the chaos we have seen on Christmas Island in recent times. The Prime Minister described this when she was Deputy Prime Minister as a ‘decision in the national interest’. I ask her this: is it in the national interest that we have riots on Christmas Island caused by the failure of this government to get a handle on its borders and its detention network. It is clearly not the case.

Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to rise on what I see as an MPI set by this incompetent opposition—an own goal, all its own work. It is quite ironic to be speaking on a motion that speaks of the failure to act competently or provide factual information. I noticed when the Leader of the Opposition was speaking, he was not speaking from carefully prepared and scripted remarks. So I suppose again: no gospel truth, nothing we can rely on, and acts of deceit quite possibly.

What a great opportunity to outline what it feels like to be part of a competent government: a government that does act in the national interest, that is committed to reform, that will make the tough decisions and that will make those decisions informed by evidence and sound advice, just as we acted competently in the global financial crisis—again providing leadership in the national interest; again, a government that will contribute to the international stage to resolve the challenges of this century.

We will continue to act competently. We will continue to make the reforms that are needed, because we are not afraid to create our future for this nation. We are not afraid to introduce the big reform agenda that we are prospering and delivering. We will not use fear, we will not use scaremongering and we will not diminish the economic and scientific evidence put forward by Australians, fine Australians, great Australians and great Australian institutions—institutions like the CSIRO and economic advisers like Ross Garnaut.

We will not tear down those things that make this a great nation: the power of science, innovation and knowledge; the wealth derived from the skills and talents of our people; the value of economic policy informed by experts. We will continue to act competently and we will deliver the big reforms such as the National Broadband Network, which will transform the way we live, the way we do business and the way we engage with each other. Big reforms such as the NBN will create economic opportunity for regional Australia. We will continue to invest in infrastructure such as the Hunter Expressway and the ARTC, through which we can envisage the possibility of high-speed rail on the east coast of Australia, and we will continue to have a national ports strategy and to look at our airport strategies. These things were lacking for 12 miserable years. We will keep finding ways to use the revenue from the mining boom to invest back into our economy for future prosperity, and we will do the big one—the price on carbon.

I know the power of reforms because I am the member for Newcastle. I know that the path to prosperity is through reform and change. The economic transformation of Newcastle over the last 10 to 15 years from a heavy-industrial, one-company town to a leading centre for innovation, productivity and prosperity is something that we can be proud of. We have gone from 17 per cent unemployment in the mid and late 1990s to five per cent unemployment now in 2011. Over 88,000 jobs have been created in my region in the last decade—and why? Because we invested in high-tech and in knowledge; we invested in innovation. We diversified our economy and took on the skill challenge. By the end of 2010, employment in knowledge based industries had increased to the point where it was around 66 per cent higher than employment in goods-producing industries such as coal.

What a turnaround has occurred—and why? Because of reforms undertaken by Hawke and Keating. We know now that our future prosperity will depend on putting a price on carbon. That is something we embrace and have waited much too long for. We want some consistency. Business wants some consistency. They want some certainty and they want to know what things will look like in the future. They want to know what they can do to create the optimum outcomes for themselves, and the most powerful market signal will be a price on carbon. We also know that it is the early adopters in this world, in business and in life, who thrive and survive. Yet I look across at the Neanderthals on the other side and despair for the nation should they ever resume government. They have no imagination, they diminish those who could advise them well and they rush headlong into scaremongering and fear.

A price on carbon will allow industry to start auditing and measuring their carbon footprint and to do the economic modelling that could make their businesses successful. They will know the cost of that pollution, and they will then know the opportunity for new investment and what it is worth. They will know what the use of offsets will do to create some wonderful businesses of the future. I know a little bit about those wonderful businesses of the future because in Newcastle we have the Australian Solar Institute, the Clean Energy Innovation Centre, the Smart Grid, Smart City initiative, the CSIRO Energy Transformed Flagship and the energy centre for the nation. We know that these innovation centres will create the future, but I want to tell you how hard that will be without a price on carbon.

Last week Commercialisation Australia and AusIndustry met at the Newcastle University Institute for Energy and Resources, which was funded and set up by the Labor government. We were looking at two great products. One was solar paint—water based paint—and the other was geothermal capacity to increase the efficiency of existing power plants. Commercialisation of those ventures is very attractive to overseas markets, but it is not attractive to Australian markets because there is no incentive to invest in these new products. How tragic it would be if these great innovations, such as solar paint and a geothermal capacity to increase the efficiency of existing coal plants, were to go overseas. Yet that is what the opposition would see happen.

Neanderthal man across there—the Leader of the Opposition—has aligned himself with the climate change sceptics. He has aligned himself with people who deny science and deny the future, he has diminished the credible voices that would shape that future and he is certainly committed to political expediency. He has gone from the argument that climate change is ‘crap’ to the following, which he said at his press conference on the day he took over the leadership:

Look, certainly I think the politics of this issue have changed. I don’t think my assessment of the science or of the policies ever changed that much. I think all that really changed was my assessment of the politics of the issue.

So we have over there a leader who will use political expediency. He does not care about the science and he does not care about the economic benefits; he only cares about the politics of this issue. I guess he has put forward his credibility and his competency in putting forward this MPI discussion. His competency saw him put forward a policy on climate change that was unfunded at a cost of $10 billion. Who would pay for that? The shadow finance minister answered that question today. He said, ‘You have to actually cut spending to pay for things.’ That is exactly what they will do it if they want to have their action agenda on climate change—they will cut spending. Yet Tony Abbott would not say where he would make those spending cuts. He has also said that tax reform is obviously about cutting government spending, and he was the Leader of the Opposition during the election campaign, when costing of his election commitments found a $10 billion hole. That is the real Tony, a fairly incompetent Tony and one whom I think brings great disrepute to the party he supposedly belongs to.

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

The member will refer to members by their appropriate titles.

Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition also spoke about a kinder, gentler polity in this parliament, but we have not seen that today; instead we have again seen the power of scaremongering and disrespectful language. I tire of the misogynist language of the Leader of the Opposition—the use of the phrase ‘the knitting circle’, the repeated use of the words ‘she’ and ‘shrill’—which serves to diminish and insult and personalise. It is not good enough.

Then, of course, we have the member Cook wanting to talk today. He was hidden from this parliament for the last couple of days, but he must be getting his act together now. All he wants to do is to say that the policies of the Howard government were successful. No, they were not. We remember SIEVX and we remember TPVs that made people have to beg to survive in this country. It was a ruthless regime that paid absolutely no attention to international events. I think it is shameful that the other side tried to diminish the parliament and diminish this nation. (Time expired)

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

As there are no other speakers on the MPI, the discussion is now concluded.