Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Abetz. I gave a speech about how consumer credit laws vary according to each state. In some states you can charge 48 per cent annual interest. In other states there are no caps on interest rate payments charged by short-term money lenders. In fact, you can roll additional fees into it, which means that some people are paying thousands of percentage points in interest per annum for short-term money.

These sorts of things need a national regulatory environment to protect consumers and ensure that there is standardisation across our country. Our country is simply too big and at the same time too small in population to have different regulations in each of our states across areas that have a commonality of interest. I suggest that that is where the focus of any reform should be. We should not be looking at replacing the service delivery obligations of the states. We should not be looking at reforming the role of our Constitution, which has supplied enormous stability and contributed to one of the world’s longest standing democracies and, I have to say, one of the greatest democracies anywhere in the world.

We need to have a consistent approach to this. We do not want to have Mr Rudd controlling the thought processes of all the state governments. We do not want to see George Orwell’s ultimate party solution coming forward. We want to see that anyone who has a voice and an opinion in this place will have it honoured and respected. Some of the early signs are very concerning. One of these of course has been the complete lack of commitment until last night about the future of the carers allowance, and there are still questions that need to be answered in this regard.

More disturbing was something that was brought to my attention earlier today. I am a very proud member of the parliamentary sports club. It is a bipartisan affair. It is an organisation which is committed to sport, to health and to ensuring that many of us will get out and be active and be good role models for the public. It is also designed to get our pollies healthier and fitter so that we can do our jobs even better than we currently do. It has met with great success in the five years or so that it has been established. It has raised about $100,000 for charitable purposes. It displays a sense of bipartisanship which fosters stronger relationships amongst our parliamentarians both domestically and internationally.

My concerns relate to a trip which was to be privately funded by our members of parliament individually and was scheduled to not only take a business delegation to England and France during the break but also engage with members of parliament in other countries both on the sporting field and outside the sporting field. No taxpayer funds, I understand, were going to be used for this. Yet when Mr Rudd’s office was advised that this trip was going to take place, I am told that the message that came back from his chief of staff, Mr Epstein, was that any Labor member who wanted a future in the Rudd government would not be going on this trip.

This is a despicable act by someone who is clearly prepared to rule the roost as some sort of oligarch. This is a problem for democracy in our system, and also for the charities that were going to be the beneficiaries of the $100,000 or so that was expected to be raised. This was a bipartisan delegation which has enjoyed wide support in the engagement with our international compatriots.

It is very disappointing and a very clear indication of how Mr Rudd intends to run his government and ultimately how he is going to ride roughshod over the states. I would hope that this is not the case but time will tell. I would only say to the people who are listening to this broadcast that we on the coalition side will continue to ensure that the states bear up to their responsibilities. We will do this through the state Liberal oppositions and through the federal coalition in this chamber as well, and I hope that we will return to a more balanced environment across Australia’s political system.