Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What extraordinary times we live in! I was going to stand tonight and speak about the Barangaroo redevelopment in Sydney and the very important role that former Prime Minister Paul Keating is playing in preserving public access and public space in Sydney. But it is pretty hard to go past the fact that in 15 minutes or so we might have a new Prime Minister—maybe in half an hour, by the time they have counted the votes.

It is not the salesman that is the problem; it is the product that they are selling. It does not matter whether it is the member for Wentworth or any of the others sitting on the other side there taking over, sitting up here at the dispatch box, they all sat around the cabinet table that made the same decision to cut $80 billion out of health care and education, to introduce $100,000 university degrees and to cut pensions. They first had a go at the full-rate pensioners and then they went for the part-rate pensioners. But they all sat around the two budgets. In the words of the current Prime Minister the first one was about savings and the second one was about confidence. These budgets actually doubled the deficit, increased the debt and, in the case of the second budget, smashed confidence.

There is some talk that the Minister for Social Services might also be a contender for the leadership, not just the member for Wentworth, Minister for Communications. When you are talking about the Minister for Social Services, that would be the guy who is now saying that 80,000 new mothers should lose up to $11,800 from paid parental leave a year. That would be the guy, who, having failed to get through changes that cut the pension for full-rate pensioners, has now gone after part-rate pensioners, the very same part-rate pensioners who live in very large numbers in his own electorate, with pensioner couples losing as much as $14,000 and single pensioners losing more than $8,000. The member for Wentworth has said, in his own words:

I support unreservedly and wholeheartedly every element in the Budget. Every single one.

But of course he also said:

Every single member of the Government supported every element in the budget—of course.

That statement was as late as February this year. So every member of the government supported the budget. What have those budgets delivered? Unemployment up; debt up; deficit up; tax up, at higher rates than we have had since the Howard government; cost of living up; and growth down.

By contrast, even during the worst of times, with the challenge of the global financial crisis, Labor managed the economy better. They actually had lower unemployment during the global financial crisis than this lot have managed at a time when things have been going so much better.

It is worth also saying, because the member for Wentworth seems to be the frontrunner at the moment, that this is a minister who has overseen a $26½ billion blow-out in the cost of the NBN. I heard the press conference today. He talked about how he wants to grow the future economy and prepare us for the changing world and all the rest of it. The most important infrastructure investment we as a nation can make to prepare for the way the world is changing is to invest in decent broadband infrastructure. This is the communications minister who has delivered slower internet speeds to households at a higher cost, a $26½ billion blow-out for a second-rate NBN that was supposed to be rolled out to homes and businesses within three years, by the end of 2016. And now that has more than doubled to seven years, by the end of 2020. And it will be more expensive and slower! He is also the same communications minister who promised no cuts to the ABC and SBS budgets, but has in fact cut more than half a billion dollars from the ABC and SBS budgets. More than 200 people have lost their jobs and hundreds more are still threatened. Regional railway stations have been shut down, with little more than a whimper from National Party colleagues. Programs have been cut, the ABC's much-loved drama and kids content have been slashed, and production facilities have been shut down, devastatingly local communities. That is the record that the member for Wentworth wants us to judge him on. Well, we are quite happy to judge him on that record of supporting this government's budgets and his slashing of the ABC.