Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is worthy to note that no government—not even the Whitlam government, I would venture to say—has come into office with such high expectations on them as have the Rudd government, because the people put their trust in them before the last election. Mr Rudd promised the people so much. Let us go through the things he did promise them before the election and what has been delivered post the election, in the first 12 months. There has been plenty of time to have delivered on the promises that he made prior to the election.

First of all, of course, he promised that he would fix petrol prices. He came up with the Fuelwatch scheme. Luckily for the government, the Senate voted the Fuelwatch scheme down. Not even their first appointed fuel commissioner could stay on the job. He could see there was no work to be done—certainly not meaningful work—and he quit the post. You see, the whole idea behind the Fuelwatch scheme was classic Labor price-fixing; that is all it was. It was just an old-fashioned price-fixing scheme. It was never going to work, and it was going to put out of business the independent operators that keep competition in the market. So the Fuelwatch scheme within the first 12 months went by the by.

Even more absurd and unworkable than the Fuelwatch scheme is the GroceryWatch website—and that is all it amounts to: a website. It does not work. I see that the figures now show that people are not using it anymore. There was initial interest. There were a significant number of hits in its early stages—as you would expect, since the government promoted it so that people would go onto this website. But when they got there—what a disappointment. It just names a region. It is only ever updated once a month. And it is a ‘basket’ of goods and you do not even know what is in the basket. It is a farce and a fallacy, and it is costing the taxpayers money—millions of dollars a year. So I dare say that eventually the government will put that in cold storage, too.

Take the education revolution, that we heard about in question time today. That was another commitment, a big commitment: a computer for every student between years 9 and 12. That was the election promise. And what have we got? We heard Senator Carr today talk about less than one per cent of students having received a computer. And we are not even sure whether those computers are plugged in, because the state governments will not meet the extra costs. The revolution never came about.

The blame game was another big promise prior to the election. Twelve months on, what have we got? I think we misunderstood what the blame game was. It was in fact that the states and the federal government were not going to blame each other for lifting taxes! As soon as the Labor Party came into government federally they lifted transport taxes, user charges and truck registrations. That was your first job—in cooperation with the states, I should add. I see that Mr Brumby has got his hand out for more money. And he is critical of the federal government. He is already floating the idea that the GST is just not enough—floating the idea that perhaps a rise is in the wind.

Another great commitment of Mr Rudd, as he looked down the barrel during the election period, was that he was going to tell it straight to the Australian people. Mr Rudd was going to tell it straight. Anyone who has been in politics long enough knows what a fake commitment that was, particularly from the Prime Minister. Nevertheless, the Australian people put their trust in him. That is something, Senator Sherry, you ought to cherish.