Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I repeat, Mr Deputy President, that the topic is about governments and that the topic is about crises. The Howard government's failure to deal with climate change demonstrates a crisis of competence in that government. That is directly on topic and it is directly to the point. You cannot have a position where the coalition come in here, run all their spurious arguments and then, when faced with some home truths about their lack of capacity to deal with some of the bigger economic and environmental issues, get up and bleat like stuck pigs, saying, 'You cannot raise those issues.' I will be raising those issues. They are directly on point and they go directly to the issue of competence.

The Howard government were incompetent in dealing with workers. What was their approach on workers? We see a crisis in the coalition now because some of them want to continue Work Choices. The member for Moncrieff, Steve Ciobo, is down there arguing to go back to Work Choices and Senator Abetz is trying to paper that over. The big crisis is not a government crisis; the big crisis is the lack of direction, the lack of vision and the lack of policy on the opposite side. We know that the member for Moncrieff is standing over Senator Abetz, trying to get a hardline, right-wing industrial policy in place. We know that is the crisis, the battle, which is going on within the coalition and we know who will eventually win, because we know that the hardliners, the right wingers, in the coalition want to create another crisis. They want to create another crisis for working families in this country by implementing Work Choices once more. We know that is the battle that is on and we know that is where it is all heading. So I will not be lectured by the coalition about crises; I will not be lectured by them for one minute.

What have the big crises been? There have been two crises which, from my perspective, are worth talking about today. One crisis was the global financial crisis. During the global financial crisis, what did the coalition have to say? They tried to pretend it was not happening. They called it 'the North American crisis' as if it were not a problem, as if we did not have to bail the banks out here and underpin them to maintain confidence in the financial system. The coalition thought things would go ahead. They said, 'We will just wait and see what happens.' If ever there were a crisis of competence, that was one. When the International Monetary Fund, when the OECD, when the Treasury and when the Reserve Bank were all saying, 'We have to stimulate the economy; we have to make sure we keep people in work,' what did the Labor Party do? We stimulated the economy and we kept 210,000 Australians in jobs. That kept rural communities and regional communities going. It kept people in work. We were not prepared to do what the coalition wanted to do—wait and see what would happen and end up in a major recession, if not a depression. We fixed that. Our record in facing crises is there for people to see. We take action and we actually deliver on jobs in this country.

What is the other crisis? The other crisis, they say, is Qantas. We heard Senator Abetz wax lyrical about Qantas. I do not mind if the coalition want to stand up, day in and day out, defending big business and defending Qantas—who showed absolutely no interest in looking after the travelling public, who treated the travelling public with contempt and who simply closed their business down and left Australians and international passengers stranded all over the world. If that is what the coalition want to defend, I am not surprised. We know they are the party of big business, we know they are the party which sucks up to big business, we know they are the party which does not want the big mining companies to pay one extra cent and we know they are the party which wants to give $10 billion back to Gina Rinehart, Twiggy Forrest, Anglo American, BHP and Rio Tinto. They want to give $10 billion back to the mining companies when the rest of the country is struggling. We want to deal with the crisis of the patchwork economy by making sure that everybody gets a fair go. And what do the coalition want to do? They want to give $10 billion back to some of the richest, most powerful companies not only in the country but in the whole world. BHP and Rio Tinto are saying, 'We are prepared to pay.' What an absolute joke these people are.

We know a crisis is on in the coalition, because we know that the Nationals do not like the Liberals, we know the Liberals do not like the Nationals and we know the Liberals do not like each other. It is all being papered over at the moment, but it is all ready to burst out like a big boil. And it will happen. Mark my words: it will happen. The crisis is one of competence in the coalition—a massive crisis of competence. They are just completely incompetent.

When we acted decisively on looking after working people in this country, when we got rid of Work Choices, what did they do? They said, 'Well, you had better look at giving more flexibility to the employers.' I have been around the industrial relations scene for a long time and I know what flexibility for employers is—it is getting rid of workers' penalty rates, their shift allowances and their annual leave loading, and making sure that they work any hours the boss wants. That is where this lot want to go. Make no mistake about it, if there is ever a coalition government again Work Choices is back. It is not a crisis of government then; it is a crisis for working people. They are the party of big business. They are the party of sucking up to big business, taking the money off big business for their election campaigns and delivering in spades to big business at the expense of ordinary working people in this country. They are an absolute disgrace and they absolutely have a hide to come here and talk about any crisis in a government that looks after working people in this country.