Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is always a pleasure to follow Senator Sherry. I have said it before and I will say it again. I will not go as far as saying that I admire Senator Sherry, but I respect his tenacity and his loyalty. He really has to sell a very difficult message. Labor’s message is that the Howard coalition government has not done a good job with the Australian economy. Labor’s message is one that is determined to switch out the lights on the Australian economy, wind back the clock and see Australia once again controlled by an extreme union movement. I respect Senator Sherry’s loyalty to the union movement, but my commiserations go to him. They have to be extended because he has the unenviable task of talking in this chamber about the track record of this government. It is unenviable for a Labor person; it is very easy for us to stand here as coalition senators and pay homage and tribute to the wonderful economic management of not only Mr Howard but also Mr Costello and our leadership team.

I note that Senator Sherry is a former official of the liquor and allied industries union. It is fair to say that his glass is certainly half empty rather than half full. Still, having something in the glass is a little bit better than looking at the empty vessel that is Labor’s policy-free zone. Their policy-free zone is as empty as our Future Fund would be if Labor were ever in power. Labor have already telegraphed their punch. Their punch is to launch a smash-and-grab raid on the financial security generated by the Future Fund. Most likely, in true Labor fashion, they will come back to the scene of the crime again and again, and they will shuffle more of the money that has been preserved for the future economic management of this country out of the back door. They will make sure that every single public servant in this country will have their superannuation payments brought into question. This is a question that Labor need to answer: when is enough enough when it comes to smash-and-grab raids?

Already they have told the Australian public that they are going to mount a smash-and-grab raid to fund a hastily cobbled together broadband policy and they are prepared to damage Australia’s fiscal solvency in order to do it. I look at the dazed faces of the senators opposite and I have to tell you just how they are affecting the future of Australia’s financial security. It is pretty simple. Mr Murray, who is in control of the Future Fund, has $52 billion that he needs to invest for the long term. Can Mr Murray realistically invest that money for the long-term benefit of Australia, not knowing if a Labor government is going to cook up a policy and say, ‘We need $5 billion today and we need you to sell a bit of this; we need you to do this’? You are undermining the long-term strategic investment in Australia’s financial future as determined by the Future Fund.

It is not enough that you are undermining it now. A significant portion of that $52 billion was generated through the sale of Telstra—a policy that we have carried through many elections and that the Australian public have supported because they have supported this government. Had we been allowed to sell Telstra when we wanted to without the confected outrage of the senators opposite, Australia would be $50 billion better off. It was a $50 billion piece of confected outrage by the senators on the other side of the chamber. It was not enough that they tried to privatise Australia’s industries. It was not enough for them to sell off public assets. It all changed when they got into power. It is a policy backflip of immense proportions. The $50 billion that you guys cost us in 11 years of negativity is a long-term threat to the Australian economy if you ever get control of the Treasury benches.

You can just imagine, can’t you, Mr Acting Deputy President Barnett, Mr Murray getting a phone call from Mr Rudd, who says: ‘I’ve come up with an idea. I need $10 billion. What can we do?’ ‘I’ll call my brokers right away—let’s just sell $10 billion of Australian assets,’ to fund some non-strategic, unfunded and unaccountable policy resolution. That is the empty vessel that is Labor policy. It is a threat and it is very damaging to Australia’s financial future.

When Senator Sherry talks about a short-term election fix rather than long-term nation-building, he is giving away a few words directly out of the Labor playbook. This is how they want to win elections—with no vision for the future, just a short-term election fix. I have to tell you that it is a pretty flimsy playbook. Even my son’s under-eight footy team could not use any of the strategic advice in the Labor Party’s playbook because it is that thin and in fact it is basically vacant.

Labor’s Future Fund raid and their ill-conceived broadband policy have been exposed as so light on detail that they are even more of a joke—if that is possible—than their IR policy. Labor’s policy on broadband is uncosted, unworkable, untested and, quite frankly, undeliverable. More importantly, their $4.7 billion threat to the future of Australia’s public servants and to the Australian economy is unnecessary. Telstra and the G9 are both prepared to roll out a fibre broadband network in the capital cities and in the major regional cities without any cost to the taxpayer. That is right: Labor want to spend $4.7 billion and threaten Australia’s future financial prosperity when industry is prepared to do it at no cost to the taxpayer. Gee, there is a tough call: which one shall we have? I know what the Australian taxpayers would prefer; they would prefer to see their taxes used in providing superior services and quality assurances as guaranteed by this government.

Senator Sherry did not only attack our policy of protecting Australia’s long-term financial interests; he raised the subject of water. What an extraordinary thing to raise—water security—after a complete dereliction of their responsibilities by—guess who—the state Labor governments. The state Labor governments have been derelict. They are awash with cash, and what do they spend it on? They spend it on hiring more public servants, to the detriment of service delivery. They cannot sustain any fiscal management or solvency. They have inherited states with little or no debt. They have provided little or no infrastructure and little or no service delivery improvement. But what did they give us? They gave us more borrowings. If you want evidence of how fiscally inept and irresponsible Labor are with taxpayer funds, have a look at every single state Labor government. They are cut from the same cloth, and it is a pretty grubby one, I have to tell you.

Where Labor fail at every single level, the Howard government come to the rescue. And they are saving the Australian public billions of dollars in previously squandered taxpayer resources. They are saving the Australian public from the fiscal irresponsibility of a Labor administration. The 2007 federal budget was a great piece of policy. It delivers on water. It delivers historic reforms in water policy on top of and to complement the previous announcement of $10 billion over 10 years to ensure the integrity and longevity of the Murray-Darling river system. This year’s budget supports a bold new approach to sustainable water management across the entire continent. We are helping to improve water efficiency. We are addressing water overallocation in rural Australia. Where is that water overallocation coming from? Let me think. Gee, the state Labor governments have overallocated our national water allocation. How can any government responsibly allocate 140 per cent of their quota to irrigators? It is unsustainable—just like every single one of Labor’s policies. And the damage is now coming to the fore.

They were unable to agree even amongst themselves. They must have all been from different factions in the Labor Party and been having a brawl in which they could not mount the numbers against each other. But when they get together, they fail—again and again—and it is a failure that is costing this country. But the Howard government are stepping in. We are revolutionising irrigation methods by reducing loss of water through leakage. We are reducing the loss of water through evaporation and we are phasing out outmoded irrigation methods. This will protect the interests of farmers and irrigators in the relevant regions. We are making river and water storage options much more efficient than they were before. We are going to fix the mess that has been caused by the mismanagement of water and the mess that has been caused by the mismanagement of taxpayer resources. And we are going to fix the mess that has been caused by the mismanagement by Labor governments not only at the federal level under the Hawke and Keating governments—we have already fixed that—but also under the state Labor governments.

This is part of a national plan for not only water security but our commitment to the environment. It is a commitment that includes $741 million in this budget to support reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions and to support the evidence saying that we need to do something about climate change. I have to say that this $741 million is for prudent, practical and realistic measures. It is not some pie in the sky. The incredible thing about the Labor Party on this particular issue is that they have signed on to a 43-year program to deliver emission cuts in 2050. They have plucked that number out of the air—or out of the European Union, actually—and thought, ‘We will just go with our comrades over there and we will do that.’ How are they going to do it? We do not know. How are they going to fund it? We do not know. What measures are they going to introduce? We do not know.

The only thing we know is that Labor’s policy on climate change is another empty vessel. But the unaccountable, irresponsible 43-year program that federal Labor are purporting to bring to the Australian public is not for us. The opposition expect the public to believe that they have a coherent plan for 43 years of greenhouse gas emissions. They have not had one single consistent policy in their 11 years of opposition. They cobble them together for every election and they realise how ill conceived they are and how hasty they have been in making these decisions that are going to be detrimental to the Australian way of life and the Australian economy. They are going to cost jobs for our workers: the hundreds of thousands of workers who have gained jobs under this government and the 326,200 who have gained them in the last year.

There are two million more Australians working today than there were when Labor was in government, and what is Labor’s policy? ‘We are going to cost Australians jobs by attacking industry, with a policy we are yet to announce—but we know it is going to cost the economy enormously. We are going to return to a ridiculous unfair dismissal regime and empower the unions to walk in and dominate every single marketplace. We are going to put forward an industrial relations policy that shadow cabinet have not even seen.’ They have seen it now, because it is out in the public; but it was created, fashioned and forged by that hard iron man of the ACTU, Greg Combet. I will put this on the record once again: who said, ‘The unions used to control the country and it wouldn’t be a bad thing if they did again’? That is not my quote; I want to make sure Hansard reflects that, because this is what Mr Combet said. As I said yesterday, Mr Combet is so wrong. It would be very damaging for him to run the country again, and yet he cannot wait to get into this place—just in case Bill Shorten gets a head start in the leadership race. That is what it is all about. It is a mad scramble. They are trying to outmanoeuvre each other to get control of the Labor caucus. It is an absolute joke.

The Australian public will not swallow the nonsense that is coming out of the Labor Party on climate change, or industrial relations, or their protection for their future, because the Labor Party have demonstrated at every single turn that they are not capable of delivering. In 11 years they have not had a single consistent policy—not one. Medicare Gold was going to save us at the last election. What happened to that? It was such a fizzer they said, ‘We’ll just promote the architect of that to the 2IC.’ That is the Labor way: ‘Let’s reward incompetence.’ What has Ms Gillard done now? Ms Gillard has fashioned the most dangerous industrial relations policy that we have seen in a very long time in this country.