Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I notice, Senator Ludlam, you say, 'Hear, hear!' which is fine. You might well enjoy re-engineering the Australian economy to satisfy your own bloodlust to take control of the Australian people, but it is not going to actually make any difference to the environment. I think we acknowledge that. The rest of the world is not going down this path. It will disadvantage Australian industry and Australian jobs. You think that is a good piece of policy. I think the Australian people will beg to differ.

So we had this promise by Ms Gillard not to introduce a carbon tax—a broken promise. We had talk of a citizens' assembly on climate change. I still remember that when Minister Penny Wong—who has had such a great track record in this space!—was there, nodding enthusiastically and going around trumpeting the virtues of building a consensus across the Australian people. But, of course, they get into parliament, the Greens tell the government what to do, and the Australian people start saying: 'Hang on, there is no consensus. The science that you have been telling us is settled is not settled at all. You said the rest of the world was going to be going down this path. They are not going down this path at all.' Even their mythical hero, President Obama, is not going down this path. He is taking a direct action plan. In the face of all of that, they ditched their citizens' assembly.

We have any number of other issues that this government has failed to deliver on, and that is building on a track record of failure by the previous government under Mr Rudd and later Ms Gillard in the previous parliament. As Senator Fifield pointed out, we had Fuelwatch, which I do not think managed to even get a start. We had GroceryWatch, in which millions of dollars were invested in a price-monitoring website which did not work. So that the government could do the Pontius Pilate and wash its hands of it, it sent it off to a consumer organisation, but of course that was not sustainable either. Millions of dollars were wasted.

If you examine the stimulus package critically, not only were there aspects of it which were abject failures but the essence of it was grotesque waste. It is as if a billion dollars—that is, $1,000 million—has very little meaning anymore to the government. When they were building school halls, they wasted around $8,000 million of borrowed money. It was not even money they had in the bank. It was not taxpayers' money. It was money they borrowed that future taxpayers will have to pay back. That has mortgaged the future generations of this country. It was not just that $8 billion in waste but a cumulative $150 billion or so in waste in only four years.

We had the $900 payments that were sent out to people. Some would argue that that is taxpayers receiving their money back, but unfortunately it did not go just to taxpayers; it went to people who were living overseas. I am sure that helped to stimulate the Greek economy, the Italian economy or the British economy! It was just wasted. It went to people who were deceased. The $900 stimulus payment went to dead people, if you can believe that. If that does not go against the common sense that means we should be critically examining everything that comes through this place, I do not know what does.

The government is now in a war against gambling and poker machines. That is once again at the behest of an Independent. But I remember when I remarked in this place that sending people $900 so that it could be used simply in poker machines was not really a great use of taxpayers' money, and I remember one senator standing up and saying: 'What have you got against poker machines? It's okay to do it.' Well, I do not have anything against poker machines, but I think that if governments want to stimulate the economy there are some better things they can do with $10 billion than simply giving it to dead people and people overseas and allowing people to blow it on gaming machines. Honestly, if you have taken the tax from them, you might as well invest it wisely. You could even cut taxes for people so that taxpayers actually got a longstanding benefit. But of course we did not see that happen. We do not see those far-sighted applications from the government because it is always a knee-jerk reaction. It is always, 'How can we get a political bang for our buck?' rather than, 'How can this nation get some nation building or get some long-term benefit for the taxpayers' buck?'

Through all these abject failures, the government has never said, 'The buck stops here.' That is a very important thing. Who has taken responsibility for the failures of this government? Have we seen any minister sacked or held to account for the policy failures? Have we seen Minister Garrett, who reigned over some of the worst decision making we have seen, held to account? The answer is no, he is still in the cabinet. Did we see Ms Gillard, who oversaw Building the Education Revolution, held to account? No, she got promoted. She got promoted for knifing Mr Kevin Rudd and she got promoted for wasting billions of dollars.

Have we seen in this place anyone held to account for the massive broadband blowout, the NBN, that went from $4 billion initially, I think, in the original tender to something like $46 billion today? That is not even included in the debt figures of this government. Did we see Senator Wong held to account for the disgraceful and misleading manner in which the government tried to sell the emissions trading scheme to this parliament—for the fakery, the misleading statements, the abuse and the belittling of anyone who dared to question what was going on?

But it has reached a new low now. It is no longer just asking a question and receiving abuse in response because the government does not like the question. We are now not even allowed to ask the questions. We are not allowed to ask the questions that the Australian people want to know the answers to. We are not allowed to ask questions about the bills that this government is seeking to implement that will forever change our country—or while this government is in power—because we cannot rescind them.

And why are we not allowed to do this? We are not allowed to do it because (1) the government has very few questions and (2) the Greens party have something better to do than be in this parliament, according to them. According to them, the Australian people are not as important as the global governance movement that will be meeting in Durban, where they will all be able to slap each other on the back and say: 'Look at us; aren't we good? We're saving the world from the nasty people, the people who care about the local people. We only care about centralising bureaucracy and entrenching power and our influence.' We are seeing what happens as a grotesque misuse of that power. That is why those on this side of the chamber like to see full and free debate.

That brings me back to my initial point. I understand perfectly that there are times when time management needs to be implemented by government. I understand that perfectly and, in a cooperative arrangement, those things can be achieved. But it does not pass the common-sense test and it does not pass the scrutiny and the probity test that three scheduled days of this parliament are going to be abolished under this motion by Senator Ludwig, and yet there are 20 bills this week that we are not allowed to talk about, that we have not been allowed to even question or make a contribution to the debate on. That is an indictment not only of this government. It is an indictment of their Greens masters, and it is a great travesty for the people of Australia. That is why I will be voting against this motion, not in my interests—I would love to go home—but in the interests of the Australian people.