Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We have a plan for better super, especially for low-income earners, and for more infrastructure, especially for the mining states like my own. These are responsible reforms for a stronger economy and a fairer Australia. We are delivering on our education revolution through the My School website, the national curriculum and new facilities for all schools around the nation.

Our commitment to justice and social inclusion has seen the removal of children from detention centres and an end to inhumane temporary protection visas, a plan that is tackling homelessness around the nation, equality for same-sex couples and their children in 85 laws, an apology to the stolen generation and a commitment to closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. We have had to fight tooth and nail for many of our reforms and the numbers in this chamber also mean that we have not won them all. Climate change remains the greatest environmental challenge of our time and one that can be fully addressed only when those opposite show the vision required to do so.

You talk about broken promises, but what you deliver are broken policies that have not worked—like your blame the states health policy under your leader, Mr Abbott, which ran down our health system and like your plan to put a massive new tax on business to make higher parental leave payments to those who already earn the most. It was a policy that broke Mr Abbott’s no new taxes policy just five weeks after he announced it.

Then there are your policies that are policies in name only, like your leader’s statement that Work Choices is dead, and the policies that you renege on under Mr Abbott’s leadership, like your commitment to put a price on carbon. So, as you sit there in your obstructionist, broken policy zone, think about this: the Rudd Labor government will be getting on with creating jobs and managing the economy, reforming our health and education systems, and making Australia a better and fairer place for all Australians.