Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I ask the Prime Minister: in the light of the Treasurer's answers to this parliament today, is she confident that the Treasurer was telling the truth, the absolute truth, when he told national radio last Friday: 'First of all, Mr Barnett did not communicate that he was going to do that to us'?

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

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. Earlier in question time the shadow Treasurer read the Deputy Prime Minister's full quote to the parliament and every word of that full quote is true and accurate. Having watched the proceedings today of the opposition frontbench, I have rarely seen such a poorly thought through attack in question time in all of the time I have been in this parliament. What the opposition are failing to recognise and at some point—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

They have asked me for my view and I am entitled to give my view having been asked. At some point they need to stop, draw a breath and do a tiny little bit of thinking instead of their negative howling. If they do that they will recognise the following: what the Treasurer said publicly is that we did not give the tick to these royalty increases. We were not consulted about them and that is clear. Getting advice that the royalty increases are in the budget documents when the budget documents are already locked in is not consultation.

And then go back to a letter 13 months ago, to a meeting in April last year, and after that time—after the time of that letter and that meeting—the Premier of Western Australia himself was out verifying publicly that he had no present plans to increase royalties.

Opposition members interjecting—

I have the quote here, as they chant. This is yet another distortion from the opposition. On 21 October 2010, the Premier of Western Australia said:

The state has no intention of increasing royalties but we will certainly reserve the right to do so.

Opposition members interjecting—

The meeting that the Manager of Opposition Business is yelling about was before that. So get the time line right. Stop and think at how absurd this attack is.

Then I should say to the opposition that I think all of this is a distraction from two things. First and foremost, they are trying to distract from the fact that the Leader of the Opposition, the shadow Treasurer and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition went up and down the nation before the last election sitting in mining communities and in mining boardrooms and saying to the people in those communities and saying to the people in those boardrooms: 'We believe any additional taxation on mining will kill the industry. We believe it will cost jobs.' And now they have been caught out, because if they genuinely believed that then their only option would be to condemn the actions of Premier Barnett. But they do not want to do that because they view their party ticket as more important to them than being straight and honest with the Australian people.

One of the reasons we are seeing this carry-on today is their absolute shame at their conduct before the last election and that they have been caught out now. The other reason we are seeing it—and we always see this kind of bravado when they are at their most deeply divided—is that the member for Wentworth and the Leader of the Opposition have had heated telephone calls back and forth; the shadow Treasurer and the Leader of the Opposition have had heated telephone calls—

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

Order! The Prime Minister will resume her seat.