Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have heard commentary lately that the opposition are getting increasingly hysterical on all kinds of arguments, and I think we have just seen a fairly good example of that. I would like to address the terms of this discussion one by one. First of all, the coalition speak about broken promises. Let us discuss the coalition’s credibility on this. I would like to quote at some length from an article by Phillip Hudson in the Herald Sun about a very well-known case in the previous election campaign when the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Tony Abbott, appeared on the ABC’s 7.30 Report. The article says that Mr Abbott revealed in that interview with Kerry O’Brien that ‘in the heat of discussions’ he sometimes went further with a promise than he should. The article went on:

Quizzed about his broken promise not to increase taxes, Mr Abbott said sometimes ‘absolute weight’ could be placed on what is said and other times it was just the ‘give and take of standard conversation’.

‘I know politicians are going to be judged on everything they say but sometimes in the heat of discussion you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark,’ he said.

‘The statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth are those carefully prepared scripted remarks.’

We have seen very little in the way of carefully prepared, scripted remarks from the opposition in the last week or two. What we have seen is hysterical over-reaction. If their leader is to be believed, nothing that he or the coalition say in this heated debate can be believed. The leader of the coalition broke promises, admitted during the election campaign, and those opposite have the gall to come into this MPI discussion and talk about broken promises. In the heat of the moment, coalition members, according to their leader, are able to make whatever wild exaggerations they like. I did not see any member of the coalition come out and decry those statements from their leader, and I presume they still apply. That is the sort of credibility the opposition have about broken promises—none whatsoever. The previous coalition government had no credibility whatsoever either. So let us forget all about broken promises and their interpretation of what Ms Julia Gillard, the leader of the government, has been saying about the carbon tax.

Let us talk about the claim of maladministration. Senator Ronaldson specifically referred to the Orgill report on Building the Education Revolution projects. What he failed to refer to, of course, was Mr Orgill’s conclusion:

The vast majority of the BER projects across the country in the government and non-government systems are being successfully and competently delivered, which has resulted in quality and, from our own observations, generally much-needed new school infrastructure, while achieving the primary goal of stimulating economic activity.

There was $16.2 billion in this package, and only three per cent of all the schools that benefited from this package had issues. In the building and construction sector, when the promise was to have early delivery of this stimulus, three per cent is a pretty good result. Such a minimal number having problems in a project of this scale in my view equates to success. I know many people have seen coalition members at ceremonies opening these BER projects—