Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

They may like it as a lump sum but they are factoring these one-off payments into their budgets. It always concerned me that, by pulling this rabbit out of the hat every budget, Mr Howard was ensuring that these people’s budgets were becoming more and more aligned with that money continuing to turn up. There was no surety that that money was always going to be there. Whenever it was announced it was always in the context of Mr Costello patting himself on the back and saying, ‘We’ve done a fantastic job of balancing the budget and we’ve got this bit left over and, because carers are good and fine people, we’ll give it to you.’ That is not a way to have an honest relationship with a group of people who do enormous things for their families and for our community. To make them feel grateful for their one-off payment is simply, I think, an unfair way to work with a very vulnerable group of people in our society.

We have also heard that, because of the way the Labor Party has responded, we somehow lack compassion. I am afraid that there are many people out there in our community who would beg to differ. If you want an example of compassion, I think you should go back to the first week of sitting of the new parliament and have a look at the enormous compassion and leadership that our Prime Minister showed by first of all inviting the local Indigenous people of the Canberra region to do what should have been done many years ago: the traditional welcome to country. This was followed by what I think is one of the most amazing days that I have experienced in this place, and that was the apology to the stolen generations.

I am deviating a little from the motion, but if there is a charge of there being a lack of compassion on this government you simply have to look to that day to see otherwise. It was a momentous day; it was a day that will go down in history—that is an understatement. It is a perfect example for anyone who is doing a bit of study in political science of how leadership actually works. Mr Rudd showed enormous leadership, supported admirably by Ms Macklin, in explaining to the Australian community why this was such an important event. I noted with incredible pride the Newspoll on the following Tuesday which showed that 65-odd per cent of Australians supported the apology that was given. If you had done that same Newspoll about a year ago you would not have achieved that result. That is what leadership is about—leadership is bringing a community with you. The most pleasing part of that Newspoll—if I am wrong, I do apologise but I think it was a Newspoll—was the fact that 70-plus per cent of women also supported the apology and the process the Prime Minister undertook to achieve that.

To make the claim that our government is not compassionate is simply not supported. If you want to go to a lack of compassion and understanding of working families, their day-to-day lives and how the economy and the way it was managed by the former government affects Australian working families, you only have to go to the impact of Work Choices on the Australian community. I think Mr Hockey got it right on the Four Corners show when he said that he thought all—I think he said all—of his frontbench colleagues did not understand how much Work Choices was affecting ordinary working people and how it was concerning them.

Mr Hockey was perfectly right in making that comment because even now we find denial and lack of understanding from the former government, and the hurt and the betrayal that people felt. People did trust the former government—you had to see it in the polling figures. People did trust the government to look after them, but Work Choices absolutely betrayed that trust because it was ideologically-driven policy that almost peeled back the covers from people’s eyes so they could see what the government truly stood for. We know that the government had wanted to do that for a very long time. We know that the only reason the government achieved it was from what happened in the 2004 Senate vote. In some respects, whilst it was a very concerning time for most, and a very distressing time for some who personally bore the brunt of Work Choices in their workplace, it did tell the truth to the Australian community of the always held intent of the Liberal Party, supported by the National Party, in terms of industrial relations in this country.

I hope that Australians in the future do remember and recall what was proposed, and what was delivered to the Australian community in terms of industrial relations. This is what the Liberal Party stand for; this is exactly what they would do if they were ever returned to government. Australians should remember and recall what happened in 2006-07 under Work Choices and the former Liberal-National Party government because that is what it really means when compassion is lost in Australian political dialogue.

I can assure those on the other side that the new Rudd Labor government intends to be prudent and fiscally conservative. It intends to treat taxpayers’ money carefully and wisely. We will not see the regional rorts that we saw in my neck of the woods under this government. We will not see hundreds of millions of dollars being wasted. I thought Mr Albanese’s comments in the House yesterday were another example of an incredible waste of money: a dog-food company—which had never been opened—was given an enormous amount of money, and it sat in their bank for two years. This is the sort of wasteful approach that the former government took to managing taxpayers’ money. It is not the government’s money; it is Australians’ money and needs to be used wisely and to ensure that there will be an outcome for our community. I can assure those sitting on that side who wrote this bit of fluff, that this is what will occur under Labor.

Debate interrupted.