Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Let us have a look at the trifecta of promises, Senator Brandis, just made in relation to the parliament. Remember when Mr Rudd won? The first promise was, ‘We will sit the parliament before Christmas, because we’re rolling up our sleeves.’ Did that ever happen? No—broken promise. He then said he would sit on Fridays. Did that happen? No—another broken promise. Then he said he would sit the parliament and make it work harder. Did that happen? No. They have deliberately constricted the number of weeks that the Senate sits to avoid scrutiny. But, if they had had the scrutiny that they so desperately seek to avoid, they would not have to send hapless backbenchers in here in this debate to try to justify the pink batt debacle.

So what we have here is the fact that the Rudd Labor government has presided over the lowest number of Senate sitting days in a non-election year since 1952. That is in the totality of Mr Rudd’s life and more. The Senate is sitting a full week less each year than it did under the Howard government. And do you remember the Labor Party complaining about how the coalition was allegedly reducing the role of the Senate in the Australian parliament? Well, if we were bad, what does an extra week or a week less mean? What it means is that Mr Rudd, as he did with so many other things, made the big statement—the grand statement and the grand promise—and then, of course, was unable to deliver.

This is the arrogant government—this ‘say anything’ government—that says to us in the Senate, ‘Get out of the way.’ But it was this government which was left with a very, very rich legacy. This was a government that was left with the coffers overflowing and Christmas Island empty. In three short—or, indeed, long—years, Labor, through all its cleverness, its ‘programmatic specificity’ and its crafty policy expertise, has been able to turn around the overflowing coffers and the empty Christmas Island to empty coffers and an overflowing Christmas Island because of its incompetency and its refusal to listen to the coalition in the Senate.

Every other area of government endeavour—between the coffers, Treasury and immigration and border protection—that Mr Rudd and Labor have touched has turned to disaster. Indeed, they seem to have the opposite of the Midas touch: everything they touch, be it Fuelwatch, GROCERYchoice, border protection, pink batts or solar panels—and the list goes on—does not turn to gold; it turns to dust. It is an absolutely terrible reflection. Yet they continue with this arrogance: ‘Get out of our way. We know what we’re doing. The fact that we’re going up a one-way street the wrong way is beside the point. Give us our head. We know. We have a vision for the future.’

I never thought that I would be placed in a position where I would say in this place that the Whitlam government was not the worst government this nation has ever seen. I have said it a number of times previously, but I must say that, on reflection, one thing that Mr Rudd can claim No. 1 first place on is being the worst government that this country has ever had. To outdo the Whitlam government, I must say, requires more than just ‘programmatic specificity’: what it requires is an arrogance and an incompetence unparalleled in our nation’s history.

That is why it is so important that our founding fathers saw and thought about the importance of a house of review, a place where legislation could be considered in detail. Indeed, today in the Australian we had an article saying that paid parental leave was being deliberately delayed in the Senate by the coalition.