George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the amendment to the address-in-reply moved by my leader, Senator Abetz. Mr Acting Deputy President Ludlam, if early indications are any guide—and I fear they will be—this period of minority government, the first minority government Australia has seen in 70 years, will be characterised by three things: by broken promises, by the delegitimisation of the role of the parliament and by a pretence that the last three years of failed Labor government just did not happen.

Most people in this country, I think, are used to the idea that politicians break promises. It is almost a part of the folklore of Australian popular culture. People are quite cynical about us politicians, perhaps more cynical than they should be. But the allegation against all sides of politics—including, if I may say so, Mr Acting Deputy President, the side that you represent, the Greens—that all political parties on occasions break promises is well entrenched in the Australian psyche. It feeds the healthy cynicism that Australians have about politicians in our robust democracy. But I daresay there has never been an occasion even in that somewhat cynical environment in which we have had a Prime Minister recently sworn in by the Governor-General, within days of being sworn in by the Governor-General, announce, as the current Prime Minister, Ms Gillard, announced on the weekend before last, that no promises will necessarily be kept. That is what Ms Gillard said in an interview with the Fairfax papers reported on the weekend before last. Because of what she chose to call the ‘new political environment’, all bets were off.

Mr Acting Deputy President, can you ever remember a time when the first utterance, the first pronouncement, of a newly-commissioned Prime Minister was to announce in advance before she faced the parliament on the first sitting day of the new session that the government would not consider itself to be bound by any of its promises because of what she chose to call the ‘new political environment’? The new political environment is, of course, the environment where a government lost its majority—the first time a first-term Australian government had lost its majority in the House of Representatives since 1931—because it was so hopeless in its first term. No government in living memory, not excluding the Whitlam government, was so wasteful, so profligate with public money. No government in living memory, not excluding the Whitlam government, was responsible for more gross policy failure than the Rudd government with scandals of public administration such as the BER scandal and the pink batts scandal. No government in living memory, not excluding the Whitlam government, was so incompetent in service delivery that it actually put lives and property at risk because of its incompetence. Leaving aside policy courage, it did not even have the moral courage to accept responsibility for its failures.

The government lost its majority. In the words of the member for Lyne, the now famous Mr Rob Oakeshott, it ‘lost its mandate’ and it ‘lost its authority to govern’. If there was ever any doubt about that, it was seen in the Prime Minister’s announcement of a laundry list of essentially housekeeping legislation, legislation largely left over from the 42nd Parliament, which constituted the government’s legislative agenda for the first sittings of the 43rd Parliament.

Newly-elected or re-elected governments are expected to come to the parliament with a series of impressive commitments, with an agenda, with a program. They are expected to say to the Australian people: having been chosen by you, albeit very narrowly, in this minority situation, this is where we want to take Australia. Where does Ms Gillard want to take Australia? It is not to be found in the laundry list of quotidian legislation that she announced last week.

So we looked to the Governor-General’s speech from the chair of the Senate yesterday afternoon to see where the government wants to take Australia, and with all due respect to Her Excellency the Governor-General, who of course is not the author of that speech, it was just another Hawker Britton script. It had no substance, no hard commitments, no vision, no program, no agenda. So that is where this government is heading. It is heading forward blindly, not sure where it wants to take the country, but sure of one thing: any promises that were made during the election are considered by the Prime Minister no longer to apply because of the so-called new political environment.

But there is one thing that we do know for sure about this government: the one solemn commitment that was made by the Prime Minister that there would be no carbon tax has already been broken. It has already been vacated. Mr Acting Deputy President Ludlam, I know that you and the political party whom you represent have always been believers in a form of carbon tax. We can have a principled difference of opinion about that, as we did in the last parliament. But at least you have to say about the Greens that they do not walk one side of the street before the election and walk on the other side of the street after the election, as the Australian Labor Party has done.

Let me put on the record some of the unequivocal commitments that the Prime Minister gave—and I can see Senator Conroy hanging his head in shame. On the Friday before the election Ms Gillard said:

I rule out a carbon tax.

It was unequivocal. There were no ifs, buts or maybes. There were no qualifications or weasel words. She said:

I rule out a carbon tax.

On The 7.30 Report on 12 August the Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Wayne Swan, was equally unequivocal and equally emphatic. In answer to a question from Kerry O’Brien about whether there would be a carbon tax, he said:

We have made our position very clear. We have ruled it out.

On 16 August, five days before the election, on Channel 10 Ms Gillard stated:

There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.

There is no nuance there or qualifications. It is emphatic. It is unambiguous. Those commitments were made by the Prime Minister and by the Deputy Prime Minister in the weeks and days before the election.

In all the miasma of spin, that was one of the few sharp points of clarity. There was a lot of woolly language and a lot of waffle, but that was something the Prime Minister was prepared to nail her colours to the mast on loud and clear: ‘There will be no carbon tax.’ Even after the election the Prime Minister said in the period when she was negotiating with the Independents: ‘There will be no carbon tax.’ So this is not just a pre-election promise; it is a post-election promise. Ms Gillard will go down in the history books for many reasons—the first female Prime Minister and the first Prime Minister to ascend to office having stabbed in the back a newly elected Prime Minister chosen by the people. All the various markers Ms Gillard has established in the history books will be supplemented by another. Ms Gillard will become the first Prime Minister not just to break a pre-election promise but to break a pre-election promise and a post-election promise in one fell swoop.

Since the deal with some of the Independents in the House of Representatives was struck and since the Labor-Greens alliance was struck Ms Gillard and her ministers have busied themselves inoculating public opinion against the objection to a carbon tax. They have been trying to soften public opinion so that these sharp, unequivocal, firm commitments are forgotten about. Down the memory hole they go, as George Orwell wrote in 1984. It will next be a thought crime to suggest for a moment that Ms Gillard ever promised there would not be a carbon tax. She said to Phillip Coorey in an interview with the Fairfax press the weekend before last: ‘In the new political environment all bets are off.’

Anybody who heard Mr Combet, for example, the person who has been given ministerial responsibility for this area, in his interview on the AM program on Monday this week would have smelt the rat. They would have heard Mr Combet trying to soften public opinion for what is now described as a carbon price. When you hear the Labor Party talk about a carbon price you know what they are talking about; they are talking about a carbon tax.

Mr Acting Deputy President Ludlam, you may possess more knowledge of these matters than any humble member of the opposition. You of course are a member of the political party that negotiated this secret deal with the government. We do not know what the secret covenants are of this treaty between the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Greens but we do know that your political party has always and in a principled way committed itself to a carbon tax. We also know that the taxation of carbon was one of the issues that were the subject of the Labor-Greens alliance. We are now seeing Labor politicians—for example, Mr Combet, on the AM program on Monday morning—starting to inoculate public opinion to get them ready for the idea that there will be a carbon tax.

The Prime Minister is an artful politician. Our Prime Minister is very deft with the dagger, as the member for Chisholm discovered only yesterday, as the member for Griffith discovered on the evening of 23 June and as no doubt the bodies of other Labor Party operatives littered throughout the western suburbs of Melbourne discovered over the years. Our Prime Minister is a very deft and ruthless political operator. She has the excuse ready. We heard it the weekend before last: this is a new political environment and all bets are off. There can be no assurance that any promise will be kept.

Let us look at other areas. During the election campaign the Prime Minister committed herself to taking effective measures to stop the influx of asylum seekers arriving by boat. I know Senator Cash is very interested in this area because she has shadow ministerial responsibility now for this area. I beg the indulgence of the Senate to interpolate my congratulations to her on her recent promotion.