Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, I don’t. I think you know him much better than I do, Senator Marshall. Tonight, I rise to look back at some of the ‘highlights’ of the last seven months of the Rudd regime. I would like to start by looking at the so-called 10 employment standards which were delivered on the very day when the Belinda Neal affair was due to be scrutinised by the House. Of course, Labor preaches about workers’ rights—so what about the rights of the workers at Iguana Joe’s? This sad and very sorry affair shows just how some in the Labor Party really feel about workers’ rights. You only had to see A Current Affair this evening, where we witnessed another chapter in this very disgraceful affair. We will just hold our breath and see what Prime Minister Rudd will do about this matter now.

Workers’ rights were a feature of Senate estimates hearings recently. The 24/7 attitude of the Prime Minister has been foisted on our Public Service. Instead of respecting the work of our public servants, the Prime Minister has shown his contempt by criticising them for not working hard enough. Having spent 20 years with the Australian Government Solicitor, I saw firsthand just how hard our Public Service works. The Prime Minister’s attitude in criticising hardworking public servants is, in my view, contemptible. The paranoia of the Prime Minister with the 24-hour media cycle, so graphically described for us in the weekend press, was vividly exemplified by the Fuelwatch legislation. Treasury staff worked through the night—37 hours straight—to get this legislation drafted and prepared for tabling. The indecent haste meant that the legislation was not even tabled in its proper booklet form. So much for balancing family and work life. This is Labor hypocrisy at its worst.

Getting back to the 10 employment standards, Labor mouth platitudes about working families but refuse to give an undertaking that no worker will be worse off. This mantra is always on their lips—to the exclusion of pensioners, seniors, carers and others—and this mantra has not stopped the Rudd government budget forecast of 134,000 job losses within the next 12 months. What about those working families whose breadwinner will lose his or her job? Where is the concern for the 134,000 who will lose their jobs in the next 12 months? This is the product of the government’s industrial relations reforms—the payback to the unions.

Deputy Prime Minister Gillard has confirmed on numerous occasions that she has done no economic analysis of the Rudd government’s industrial relations laws and their impact on job losses. Glenn Milne described the secret union pact with the Rudd government in the Sunday Telegraph of 23 March. There they all were, the union heavyweights, at the official Australia Day function at the Lodge. As Glenn Milne wrote:

A leaked union strategy document marked ‘confidential’ reveals … ‘strong support’ from Mr Rudd … for new industrial relations arrangements that will drive up inflation.

Of course, the unions want payback for their $30 million investment in the anti-Howard government campaign and the more than $50 million that they have contributed to Labor coffers since 1996. And we now have a government where power is concentrated in the Prime Minister’s office and chaos has ensued, with the February draft charter letters still in the Prime Minister’s in-tray, with ministers flying blind, with Senator Faulkner amassing a wealth of ministerial responsibilities as the Prime Minister seeks to take policy control away from portfolio ministers. And all this is at a time when the Rudd government has stripped $1 billion from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry in 2008-09, with rural and regional Australians to suffer as a result, and spent $2 million on a 2020 summit instead of worrying about the here and now. During Senate estimates we saw the rather dubious contracts that were awarded in jobs for the boys and girls. At a time when its green credentials were in tatters, the Rudd government was prepared to pay a $530,000 bill for the Bali climate change junket in December but not to continue highly successful Howard government programs like solar panels, community and water grants.

We had Senator Allison come in earlier bemoaning the various broken promises made by the Rudd government. Senator Allison, you should have thought about that before you gave them your preferences. Medibank Private has revealed that it alone expects to lose up to 290,000 members as a result of Labor’s foolish, ideologically driven Medicare surcharge changes, which, as my colleague Senator Cormann so ably elicited in Senate estimates, will result in crippling even further our public hospital system. No concern is being shown for the impact on community groups of attempting to abandon hundreds of the former government’s Regional Partnerships commitments.

The Rudd government has been shown to be all about spin over substance. It is about pressing forward with bad policy, often in the absence of, or in spite of, proper modelling and evidence from its own departments. Treasury confirmed that the government did not consult with the Department of Health and Ageing about the ready-to-drink tax, confirming it is purely a revenue-raising measure, implemented with no consideration of the health implications. The Rudd government did not ask either Treasury or the Department of Health and Ageing to model, cost or in any way assess the impact of the Medicare levy surcharge change on our already overloaded public hospital system. The government did not consult with the states and territories about the changes and the burden that they would place on the public health system.

We have the expose of the government’s incompetence in relation to Fuelwatch. There was no urgency for this measure, but it was rushed in when the Rudd government hit turbulence with rising petrol prices. Then there is the computers in schools program. What a sham, with departmental officials unsure of the delivery of the computers or the costs to schools, with the budget for the program significantly underfunded. We now have a case where even the ABC is complaining, about bullying of its journalists. And Jeeves, the Prime Minister’s butler, is having a very hard time cleaning up the mess!

All this reveals an alarming incidence of maladministration, a stubborn refusal to seek advice and, in short, a government in disarray. All this, and so very much more, and we are only seven months into this government.