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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Acting Leader of the Government in the Senate (Senator Conroy) to a question without notice asked by Senator Brandis today, relating to the appointment of the Hon. John Fahey.

Labor’s appointment of John Fahey to oversee its $5.6 billion rebuilding fund is the biggest vote of no confidence by a government in itself and its finance minister. Senator Conroy said in his answer that Mr Fahey was appointed to ‘get it right’. If it needs one former Liberal finance minister to administer $5.6 billion, I wonder how many it might take to administer Senator Conroy’s $43 billion NBN program? Why don’t we have a swathe of former Liberal ministers to help administer that fund? I had the great privilege of serving under Minister Fahey when he was finance minister while I was Special Minister of State. I congratulate the government on his appointment, because it has appointed a good person. But the reason that it needed to appoint a good person is that the government recognises that in its own ranks it does not have a person of the stature and capacity of Mr Fahey. That is what the government has said.

What else does the Minister for Finance and Deregulation get her ministerial loading on her salary, the big white car and all the staff for? She gets all those spoils of office because there are responsibilities that go with the office. But what she has done is said: ‘I’ll keep all the spoils of office but I’ll outsource the responsibility to former Liberal minister Fahey.’ That is a dereliction of duty that the Australian taxpayer should not have to fund. It is a dereliction of duty that the taxpayers of Australia should not have to put up with.

But then one reflects: this comes after the debacle of the border protection policy, which has blown Labor’s budget by $1.1 billion—an extra burden on the Australian taxpayer because of that bungle. Just as an aside, I wonder why we did not get a border protection levy to pay for that $1.1 billion bungle by Labor. Because it was too politically sensitive, no doubt.

Then we have the GP superclinics. Foolish me, I thought GP stood for ‘general practitioner’. We now know it stands for ‘grand pork-barelling’ superclinics. Those superclinics were designated, not courtesy of the health department, not by a health imperative, but by a political imperative. The decision was not made by the Secretary of the Department of Health and Ageing but by the federal secretary of the Labor Party, concerned about their marginal seats campaign.

We then have the cash for clunkers debacle, the green loans scandal—and so the list goes on. It is no wonder that the government has lost confidence in itself to administer anything, and that is why it has had to revert to Mr Fahey. Mr Fahey knows how to clean up a mess. He was the minister for finance who came to office after Labor had promised that the budget was in balance, if not in surplus, and of course there was a huge hole in it—billions of dollars missing. And there was debt of $93 billion owing. Mr Fahey started the task of cleaning up that mess. I have no criticism of Mr Fahey but an absolute criticism of this government’s inability to find, amongst all the men and women on its front bench—indeed, even on its back bench—somebody with the capacity to administer a $5.6 billion fund, a fund that we support, a fund that we believe is necessary, a fund that we want to have administered in a good and proper manner to ensure that the rebuilding of Queensland and other areas around Australia after the devastating floods, cyclone and bushfires can take place. But why can’t a minister, who takes the oath of office to administer these funds, actually undertake the task which she is sworn to undertake? What is so obvious here is that the minister for finance herself is not in the chamber to defend the decision. Methinks she was not even consulted.