Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities, Carers and the Voluntary Sector) Share this | Hansard source

We have just been witness to an outrageous bunch of indifference from Senator Collins and the Labor Party. The mums and dads of Australia are living in fear at the moment, in fear of many different things. They are in fear of the financial crisis; they are in fear of paying their mortgages; they are in fear of losing their jobs. And what is happening now? They are also in fear of child care. What do we hear from the Labor Party? We have this trawling through history, the corporate annals and the financial reports. We have an attack on organisations that are trying to make money. Is this what we are returning to with the Labor Party? Are we going back to where for-profit enterprise is frowned upon, to where it is wrong, to where you can be employed only by the government?

Let me share this with Senator Collins and the rest of the Labor Party over there: this country was built on the back of enterprise. It was built on the back of investment by private individuals trying to create and provide services for the rest of the country. Yes, occasionally things do not work out. They sometimes do not work out for people who have invested their money, and they sometimes do not work out for those people that are reliant on the services. The coalition is absolutely mindful of this. We are concerned. We share the same fears that the mums and dads of Australia have right now, because we know just how incompetent, hopeless and lethargic this government really is.

Let’s just talk about the lethargy that is being demonstrated. Senator Collins was happy to wax lyrical about how there were warning signs for ABC Learning Centres for such a long time.