Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian people made their judgement about merit on 24 November. The reduced number of representatives that sit on the opposition side of the House of Representatives and the reduced representation that will sit on the other side of the Senate after July demonstrates that, on the issues of merit and performance, the coalition failed. They failed dismally. The Australian people looked to Kevin Rudd and the Labor team to fix up the mistakes and take this country forward. They voted for us overwhelmingly.

Today we had Senator Abetz get up and ask a question about jobs for the boys. Why would any coalition senator ever want to go to that issue? It would take me a lot longer than the five minutes or so that I have to go through the list of all the appointments made by the then coalition government while they were in office—all the mates that they put on inquiries. I will just mention one—Mr Estens and the communications inquiry—but I could go on and on.

But what about the really important issues that you would think they would want to raise in the first taking note of answers debate? One is the issue of climate change. As Minister Penny Wong said, the Labor government’s first action was to ratify the Kyoto protocol. Our standing in the international community went up enormously in Bali at the climate change conference because finally Australia joined the rest of the world to tackle the issue of climate change by signing Kyoto and then going on to establish the Garnaut inquiry.

On the issue of the economy, we were lectured so often by the former Treasurer, the former Prime Minister, and other representatives in this chamber and in the other one about them being the great economic managers. It was the coalition government that delivered us 16 interest rate rises during their entire time in office—seven of them in the last term. We now have to deal with runaway inflation as a result of the unrestrained spending by that government during the last couple of elections when they were endeavouring to buy their way back into office.

Finally the Australian people said: ‘Enough is enough. We aren’t going to cop any more of these bribes in election campaigns or these ad hoc decisions made on funding commitments.’ Despite that temptation—that carrot—they said: ‘Enough is enough. We’ve had enough of this coalition government. We are going to give a Labor government—so brilliantly led by Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard—with a meritorious team of ministers, the opportunity to right the wrongs.’