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

I rise today to speak to this supposed general business motion by Senator Ellison. Frankly, I think this is more an attempt by the opposition to manufacture an air of concern and to shift the blame to the current Labor government, knowing full well that it is their own stewardship of the Australian economy that has put us in the difficult inflationary position we now confront.

I was going to start by dealing with the economy, but I cannot help but respond to the comments made by Senator Bernardi at the end of his speech. He made some reference to the Prime Minister being a Christian socialist and he said you cannot be both. I am not sure what point Senator Bernardi was really trying to make, but I have a reasonable suspicion that this was a cheap shot at Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister, because he has made it very clear that he is a practising Christian.

I want to remind Senator Bernardi, because he says he comes from the same background and professes the same beliefs, that at the heart of Christianity is the concept of helping one’s fellow man, particularly the poor, the oppressed and the downtrodden. You might want to go back to the New Testament and read the Sermon on the Mount, or read the writings of Thomas Aquinas or those of Saint Vincent de Paul, where they talk about extending the hand of support to those who need it, remembering the words of Christ: ‘When you do it to one of these, the least of my brethren, you do it to me.’ That is, the mark of a true Christian is not to push the downtrodden even further down but to offer support and help. When you look at the history of the previous government and what they did in the area of social policy, you cannot help but think that any notions of Christian values went out the window. They talked the talk but they certainly did not practise what they preached.

I sat on many a committee in—I have to acknowledge—the long years of opposition, along with my colleagues here in the Senate today, Senator McLucas and Senator Webber. Among those committees was the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs inquiry into poverty. The committee made a series of recommendations to the government of the day, the Liberal-National coalition government, to address the appalling situation with poverty and hidden poverty in this country, where people could not get access, for instance, to decent dental care or health care; where they could not get access to appropriate financial counselling and assistance because the financial counsellors were overburdened with so many applicants. Everywhere we went around this country, we heard depressing stories about the financial pressures on Australian families. I remember going to the city of Lismore in northern New South Wales and the representative of St Vincent de Paul telling us that they now had to be financial counsellors. Their role had changed over the years because of the incredible financial stress on Australian families. They were doing the job that the government should have been doing. That was a message we heard constantly.

And what was the government’s response to that Senate committee report on poverty? Nothing. I think it took them months and months and months—I cannot remember how long, but it was well past the Senate requirement for the government to respond within three months—and then it was just a paltry dismissal of all of those considered recommendations, recommendations that arose out of the evidence of the organisations working at the coalface in Australian society, looking after the people who needed support. So do not come in here and lecture us about Christianity or socialism or helping the poor or looking after them.

The same thing happened in health care. Senator McLucas and I recall the inquiry into Medicare. We all remember former Prime Minister Howard and his original view on Medicare. I do not think he ever changed his real view. His original view was that Medicare was an abomination and should be got rid of. The opposition took that as a policy to the election in 1993 when they thought they were going to win. They were going to win under Mr Hewson. They were going to get rid of Medicare. They were going to attack working families, industrial relations legislation and they were going to bring in a GST at the time. They were the three great policies on which they went to the 1993 election, which they lost. They lost what, at that stage, probably should have been an unlosable election. The Labor government had been in power for a long time. One of their central policies was to get rid of Medicare, and of course the Australian people were not going to cop that. Australians rejected the Hewson-led opposition, of which Mr Howard was shadow minister for industrial relations at the time, and they rejected their proposals on GST and industrial relations.

So Mr Howard had a change of public position: ‘Medicare is here to stay.’ However, one of the first things they did when they got into government in 1996 was to start to dismantle Medicare. They claimed that they brought a fairer Medicare system about, but they did not. They did nothing about the declining rates of bulk-billing.