Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Hansard source

I am proud to be part of a Labor government that is prepared to take on the hard tasks and the difficult agendas. We sat on that side of the Senate for 11½ years and watched those opportunities simply trickle through the coalition government’s fingers. The big, hard questions that we have had the temerity and the fortitude to tackle are things like really trying to start working to ensure that we have a health system in this nation that will deliver for people who need it; and an education system that works across the country, a single curriculum where constituents who by nature of their job are very transient are able to move their children around the country and get a quality education. I am proud to be part of a government that did tackle sensibly, decisively and with great success the global financial crisis. We have tackled the issue of Indigenous aspiration, something that is never going to be delivered in a short period of time. But at least we have started. We have started dealing with the questions of health, housing, education and, in particular, employment for Indigenous Australians.

It is terrific to be part of a government now working with people on the crossbenches and the Greens to deal with the questions of rural, remote and regional Australia. It is terrific to be part of that. And, yes, we are going to tackle one of the hardest pieces of public policy—that is, dealing with the Murray-Darling Basin. What do we get, though, from those sitting over there? We get name-calling, nastiness, pettiness and base political point-scoring. Last night I was there when the Prime Minister expressed some astonishment at the comments we have had over the last couple of days from Messrs Hockey and Robb. It is quite extraordinary that here we are in 2010 and we have two opposition frontbenchers—two would-be ministers, minister of finance and Treasurer—are pulling back the economic reforms that I thought, and I think our Prime Minister thought, that for the past nearly 20 years were agreed on: that we needed to have a more open market economy and deregulation of the banks, and that the way that interest rates are set in this nation by an independent entity is the right thing to do. So why are we revisiting economic arguments that were won and agreed to more than 20 years ago? I will tell you why. Because it is easy politics; it is lazy politics as well. It is simply appealing to those who want to find a simple answer rather than taking the hard way, the difficult way—the way that I know that many of you who sit over there in fact agree with.

I thought the Prime Minister’s comments last night were very, very apt and important to inform the community debate around what we are really talking about. Let us not let the economic debate in Australia fall so low that we get to questions around—and I do recall it—‘Why don’t we print some more money?’ That is another line that a former member of the House of Representatives, who I think the Prime Minister was alluding to last night, suggested was a reasonable economic strategy. Be careful. I urge caution. We are in this place to lead the debate and not to fall to the lowest common denominator. I encourage leadership; I encourage good, common sense.