Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We have just listened to Senator Cash for five minutes. Not once did she go beyond the utterance of cliche or homily—all screeched out there for five minutes without taking a breath and without saying one word of sense. Let us consider a little bit of history. Let us go back in history a little to when the first Howard government was elected in 1996. Since that time, from 1996 until now, there have been three significant packages of legislation introduced into this parliament. Two were introduced by the Howard government and one is about to be introduced by this government. The three packages are the GST legislation, the Work Choices legislation and the government's proposed carbon tax legislation. Each of those packages of legislation goes to one critical factor: it seeks to alter behaviour. In the case of the GST, it sought to alter spending behaviour. In the case of Work Choices, it sought to radically change the use of labour to make it cheaper. In the case of the clean air package, outlined by the government and shortly to be introduced, it goes to changing the behaviour of energy producers and users in this country.

In the case of the GST, any compensation that was offered by the government of the day had to be dragged out bit by bit. House­holds and families were significantly worse off, as the then government acknowledged, but it had to be done for the good of the country. Of course with the Work Choices legislation it was just about removing protections and benefits. Untold people were harmed, and their retribution was visited in the election of 2007. With the clean air package we acknowledged at the outset that there is going to be some impact on prices. It is going to affect those who are employed, it is going to affect families and it is going to affect those most in need. So what have we done from the outset? We have acknow­ledged that—we have been saying it for 12 months—and we have designed and will implement a comprehensive package of household assistance measures—