Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

We can feel an election in the air at the moment, because, six weeks out from the calling of an election, we can start to see the Howard government say and do anything. They have form on this, and they have been building up to a crescendo for quite some time. It is very clear now that the Howard government have one strategy and one strategy only. Fortunately, we do not have to look too far to understand what it is, because most of it was laid out on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers just yesterday. When we look at the tactical, strategic and political spin constructed by Crosby Textor, no less, we see that the Howard government’s pollster has been engaged to do the government’s work. More than anything else, what this tells us is that not only are the Howard government completely void of any true leadership and vision for this country but they need Crosby Textor, like a crutch, to tell them what to do in an election year.

The stakes are always high in an election year. There is no doubt about that. We are always trying to come up with the best polices. But, I have to say, even I was amazed at the bluntness and the completely led-by-the-nose approach of the Howard government in following that Crosby Textor line. Evidence of this is very clear for all of us to see. At the same time this material was leaked, we saw the strategy being played out on the ground. The best example this week is that of blaming the states. There it was from Crosby Textor: ‘Blame the states; good strategy. It will give us some cover.’ And there we had it: the Prime Minister, standing proud and tall, saying, ‘The states are to blame for everything, including interest rates.’ He cannot back away from the fact that there have been eight consecutive interest rate rises in Australia and we are on the verge of a possible ninth. So what does Mr Howard do? He blames the states for this. This is evidence not only that he has lost touch with what working families are going through but also that he is incapable of thinking for himself on how to manage the issues in an election year—and he relies on the crutch of Crosby Textor to tell him to do the latest trick and spin, which is to blame the states.

This amounts to nothing more than a deceitful attitude to the population of this country, because it undermines any claim by the Prime Minister of having leadership and a voice for the future. He is trying to build a campaign around this whole experience thing, but the evidence we now have before us shows that he is incapable of doing that. His attempts to blame the states for interest rate rises come nowhere near passing the believability test for Australia’s families. Everybody knows that interest rates have always been the responsibility of the federal government. I note with interest as well—just to remind people of the rapidly sliding credibility of the Prime Minister, who people now know cannot think for himself and does not have a leadership bone in his body—that he never mentions that when he was Treasurer in the 1980s interest rates hit an all-time high of 22 per cent. So, make no mistake, state governments of all political persuasions have always borrowed for infrastructure—for things like roads, schools, electricity, water and hospitals. And we all know that that lifts the productivity capacity of the economy and puts downward pressure on interest rates. So there is nothing the Prime Minister can say at all to spin this around and suggest that interest rate pressure is coming from the states. He has been discredited by economic commentators. He has been discredited politically. And, thanks to the Crosby Textor argument, he has been discredited—finally—because Australians now know that there is no substance to the Prime Minister.

Concluding on the Mersey hospital circumstance, under the Howard government the Commonwealth’s share of public hospital funding fell from 50 per cent to 45 per cent between 2000 and 2005. In the last health funding agreement with the states, the Commonwealth ripped $1 billion out of public hospital funding, and the government has no strategy to prevent illness and promote health, resulting in 500,000 preventable hospital admissions each year. The shortage of GPs puts immense pressure on public hospitals because of people presenting to emergency. All of these things the Howard government is responsible for, yet the Howard government has done nothing. (Time expired)