Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Barnett, you are right. It had to be passed within 48 hours or all calamity would come upon us. Now, all of a sudden, the government is willing to amend its own package. All of a sudden, that is not a problem. Senator Ferguson has just reminded me that the most galling thing of all is that Senator Evans complained about opposition senators giving long speeches. Excuse me! Who was filibustering in this debate today and yesterday and trying to drag the issues on? I think everybody listening in knows exactly who gave the long speeches, who gave the irrelevant speeches. Might I just say to Senator Evans that he really does have to get his lines right on this. He says on the one hand that we are irrelevant, yet he blames us for the result. If these measures are defeated in this place, it will not be because of the coalition. We do not have the numbers. If the package is defeated it will be because 50 per cent or more of senators have voted against it.

That does not, of itself, mean that there will never be another package. What it means is that Mr Rudd would do himself and the Australian people a great service by sitting down with the alternative Prime Minister of this country, Mr Turnbull, and discussing a package. Mr Turnbull has been open to that from day one—that has been made perfectly clear—but in Mr Rudd’s arrogant style, on his one-seater bulldozer, he has refused to deal. Of course, the deals were done today—very, very late in the piece.

I simply say this to my fellow Australians: whilst on the face of it the Labor Party have a sugar coating to offer the Australian people, with cash payments—money here, money there, money everywhere—that lolly has a very bitter centre and the sugar coating will not last as long as the bitter centre, which will leave a terrible economic aftertaste in the mouths of all Australians. For the $900 cheque they might get in the mail on 11 March, they will have a $9,500 debt, together with interest. That is not a very good deal on any mathematics.

We are willing to engage in discussions with the government and we are willing to look at a package, but we are not willing to have a situation where we were told by the leader of the government that, on advice—and I would still like to know who the advice was provided by; I have asked a number of times; we were never told—the package had to be passed by last Friday or the payments could not be made. All the officials said that was wrong. I still want to know where that advice came from. We know that the package went to the printer at 6 am; we know the Treasurer signed off on it the night before; and so it goes on. It was a rushed package; it was an ill-considered package. Indeed, in a matter of a few hours today, the government were able to concede $500 million worth of changes to the package with the Greens. I suggest to them that, if this package falls over, they ought to take a deep breath, learn from their arrogance and include everybody in a discussion so that we can all act within the nation’s interests.

We as an opposition have thought long and hard about these matters. Very simply, we are concerned about the following. We had the task of paying off Labor’s last debt. Labor’s legacy was a $96 billion debt. It took us 10 years of hard work, opposed every step of the way by Labor, to pay off that debt. In fact, it was finally paid off on 21 April 2006. What took the Hawke-Keating Labor government 13 years to rack up, $96 billion, Mr Rudd has been able to rack up in not 13 years but 13 months. Double that first amount and add a bit more, and there is a $200 billion debt legacy to this nation. Having been involved from day one to the very end of the Howard government in working off that debt, I do not look forward to a future Liberal government—and of course it is not the government that pays for it; it is a future generation of this nation—being confronted with paying off the $200 billion debt legacy, the $9,500 per man, woman and child legacy, that Labor wants to leave with them. We believe that is irresponsible. We believe that it is not social justice to say that we are delivering social justice today by mortgaging future generations’ capacity to deliver social justice when it is their turn to govern the country. We believe in intergenerational responsibility. That is why we oppose this measure and will be voting against the third reading.