Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

How ignominious it is that Senator Cash ended by breaching the rules which she came in here to say should be upheld and that she did so in such a way that Senator Abetz has now fled the chamber. It is quite extraordinary.

Senator Cash's motion was debated at great length in the chamber just the day before yesterday, and Senator Cash took no role in it—she had no contribution to make. But today, no doubt aided and abetted by people who have more influence on the opposition then she does, she has brought forward this motion and made quite a hash of trying to substantiate any point in it. It is, of course, a motion to discuss personalities and politics rather than anything germane to or with any impact on the electorate. Therefore, to raise the level of debate from where Senator Cash began it, I intend to move that her motion be amended so that the following words are inserted after 'Senator Cash':

but considers the call from the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Abbott) to debate Australia's economy, and his proposals which would lead to a $70 billion deficit and extensive job losses, as a more appropriate matter for debate in the Opposition's private senators' time.

The honourable Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, began the week saying 'bring it on'—he wanted to discuss the economy. However, I understand from news reports that he has not been able to do that in the House. Here we have a sterling opportunity to have a debate about the economy, and Senator Cash crashes right across it with this very petty and pretty poor motion, thereby using up the opposition's own private senators' time. Any reader of the Hansard is going to wonder what on earth has happened to this opposition. Senator Cash has only two colleagues in here out of the whole lot of them—there is nobody in here to listen to the debate. According to the opposition, the time allotted to debate this notice of motion is an opportunity to waste time. But as far as the Greens are concerned it is an important opportunity to talk about issues which the electorate is interested in reflecting upon. My proposed amendment to the motion is currently being circulated amongst members so that they can see the merit in it and, hopefully, vote for it so that at the end of the day a substantial motion, rather than the frivolous one Senator Cash brought before the chamber, is passed.

When, as we moved halfway through this period of government, Mr Robb, the honour­able shadow finance minister, revealed that there was a $70 billion deficit in the opposition's policies, there was a fair amount of shock. I was among those who were shocked; I had had the excellent economist in my own Greens policy unit look at the opposition's policies, and the report had come back to me saying that, in the assess­ment of the economist, there was a $70 billion deficit in what the opposition was putting forward. I am loath to admit this, because I know how vulnerable one is to any admission in parliament, but I said to my policy unit: 'Look, that's incredible; the public won't believe that. Can you come back with a more modest deficit in the opposition policy?' They were working on that at the time Mr Robb came out and confirmed that the economists were correct. This opposition says, 'Put us into office and we'll give you a $70 billion deficit.' Mr Hockey said that the coalition faced the task of finding $50 billion, $60 billion or $70 billion and Mr Robb again confirmed that $70 billion was 'the order of magnitude' as recently as November. What an extraordi­nary failure this is of a conservative opposi­tion which is dedicated to returning a surplus in the interests of the Australian people.

What is the penalty clause for that $70 billion that Senator Cash and her colleagues would run Australia into deficit with if we put it into more human terms? I can tell you that this would facilitate their friends at the big end of town at the expense of average Australians and their hospitals, their schools, their security, their roads, their public trans­port, Indigenous welfare, the environment, rural extension services. Senator Cash and her colleagues would rip that apart with massive spending in the interests of their particular section of the community, but to the detriment of everybody else.

We know that the first point of attack of the opposition, were they to get into government under their honourable leader Mr Abbott, will be the Public Service. We have heard from the opposition themselves—Senator Cash has not said this, but her more senior colleagues have—that some tens of thousands of Public Service jobs will go immediately. This country's voters need to know that and to understand that there will be a lot of breadwinners who are going to find themselves at home without a job if Senator Cash and her colleagues make it into government. I am not making this up; this is their own assessment of their own policies.

Senator Cash does not want to talk about that. She wants to be petty and to recycle debates from earlier in the week—during which she failed to make any contribution whatsoever—to fill up time on a Thursday afternoon, when you would think the opposition, if it did want a debate on the economy, would be in full flight. The only flight it is making is out of this chamber. All but three of them are missing right now. You have to wonder if this is an opposition the public expects in any way. It is totally bereft.

The government says it wants to end up in the black. The coalition wants a one per cent surplus rather than the 0.1 or 0.2 per cent that the government intends. That would mean finding more than an additional $10 billion. Take that out of health and education and transport and housing and so on. If it is to start funding the dental health and disability insurance aspirations to which Mr Abbott referred at the Press Club, it will need even more tax increases or spending cuts.

Mr Acting Deputy President Bishop, you would know that at the moment the Green's spokesperson on health, Senator Richard Di Natale, who is from Victoria, is negotiating with the Minister for Health on the health insurance legislation, which is before us at the moment. The Greens have a long-held policy based on community feedback that would produce a much better dental health scheme for this country. We have led that debate here. I have been pursuing that, even through the long drought of the Howard years, which represents the philosophy of Senator Cash. Not only did we not see an improvement in dental health care services, but we also saw a perfectly good scheme that helped pensioners and others get ripped out while the coal industry and others were being given hundreds of millions of dollars under the rule of Senator Cash and her colleagues. She was not here when pensioners were having their dental health scheme abolished, but she was part of the apparatus.

That is only a shade of what is to come if Senator Cash and her colleagues have their way. All her senior colleagues are missing from the chamber in this important debate. If the Abbot-led coalition, which I see is on the slide in the polls, were to come to govern­ment—I note in passing that Senator Cash's criticism about the appearance of the Greens in public comes with an increase in the Greens' position in the poll this week from 11 to 13 per cent. Senator Cash finds that amusing and so that is something we can celebrate together.

Senator Cash has an obsession with my good colleague from New South Wales, Senator Lee Rhiannon. Senator Cash is there with the poor old Murdoch media trying to create division and isolation. Is it me who is isolated, or is it Senator Rhiannon? I don't know. Use your time on that, Senator Cash, as you will, but the public see it as a missed opportunity and an abrogation of your duty if you do not come forward with policies other than the $70 billion black hole. They see it generally as a failure to get on with the job of putting forward a program that the voters of Australia might find exciting. I think it is far too much for me to suggest that there be a vision as well as a program brought forward. The amendment that I am proposing, which I hope the Senate will take up, leads me back to the issue of the Hon. Mr Robb, the shadow finance minister, suggesting that commodity prices could come off more than the govern­ment is forecasting in the coming years and there would consequently be a deficit of $50 billion. He did that in an interview on Lateline on 29 November last year. Given the rhetoric of the coalition about avoiding deficits, you are left with the conclusion that this would require them to find that addition­al $50 billion in savings. What we get to here is a completely hollow concoction from the opposition if they are going to respond with more than criticism of this minority Gillard government and where it is going.

We have an opposition that has no substance. It is very good at personal abuse. It does not like putting on the boxing gloves if it cannot fight below the belt—and Senator Cash has just demonstrated that again here today. What a sad lot of opposition members we have in this chamber. You would have thought that, if this situation in the country is as difficult as they say it is, the opposition would have a very substantial motion before the Senate in private members' time on Thursday afternoon with some constructive alternative to put to the people of Australia. Instead of that, as their shadow finance minister, the Hon. Mr Robb, has pointed out, their current policy platform would lead us into a $70 billion black hole.

What Senator Cash has done in bringing forward this motion is just attack personalities and events. She failed under the Senate program to make any contribution whatever, and left this till Thursday after­noon. If she had wanted to make a real construction for the Senate in this important private members' time of the week, there would have been a motion presenting legisla­tion, presenting an innovation, testing out the Senate to take a lead in public discourse. Instead of that, it has all been scuttlebutt and petty personality disputation coming from Senator Cash. What a lost opportunity.

Mr Acting Deputy President, for 13 years there was effectively no private members' time for discussion of bills during the Howard years. And you will remember that they took over the Senate and used it as a rubber stamp; they dishonoured its long tradition of being a watchdog for the people. But, having got the opportunity after the vote of the people of Australia in 2010, the Greens established, amongst other things, private members' time dedicated to legislat­ion in both houses of parliament. When I asked my office to look at this just this week, it found that my team—every one of whom works hard and is an innovative thinker and is constructive in this place—has produced no fewer than 45 pieces of legislation to benefit the people of Australia. The coali­tion, with three times as many members on the opposition benches in the Senate, has produced the princely sum of five. There you get it: a ratio where the Greens output in constructive legislation per person is 20 times-plus that of Senator Cash and her colleagues. And if Senator Cash has got a piece of legislation on the slate I do not know where it is.

It is very easy to come in here and waste time. It is much more difficult to come in with constructive ideas. Senator Cash menti­oned the intergovernmental agreement on forests in Tasmania. It was a Labor govern­ment which made the monumental break­through, in the wake of great public protests in Western Australia, on the back of moves by the Liberals at the time to protect at least a substantial component of the great forests of Western Australia, though there is more work to be done there. But Senator Milne and I and, indeed, the whole team of Greens are very proud to be working towards the protection of the world renowned forests of Tasmania. The National Geographic, for example, has been in Tasmania and is well aware that the tallest flowering forests on the face of the planet are a perfect complement to the giant redwood forests of California, which are of enormous interest right around the planet.

But Senator Cash and her colleagues—not least, of course, Senator Abetz—are chain­saw driven. They want to put the bulldozers into these World Heritage-value forests. They are flying in the face of 80 per cent of public opinion around the country that says 'protect them'. Again, she raised the issue. I would say to Senator Cash: go out and talk to the people of Australia, not least in your own state, and see what they think about protect­ing wildlife habitat, about preventing the extraordinary rate of extinct­ion of species in this country. Go beyond the carping and petty politics that so often is exhibited at this time on Thursday afternoon and, instead, think about what it is that makes a community happy.

I have adverted to the failure of the opposition to come up with an economic policy—except one which will leave a $70 billion black hole and see the wholesale sacking of public servants and the defunding of hospitals, schools, housing and public transport. But there are other values in life as well. This is an opposition which is riddled with climate change sceptics and opposed to action to prevent the pollution of our atmosphere, which is an enormous threat to lifestyle and happiness as well as to the future economy. Wouldn't this have been a great opportunity for Senator Cash to have outlined the opposition's environment poli­cies? Certainly if she had done that her 17-minute speech might have been more like 17 seconds—but there must be something there. There must be some recognition of the environment somewhere in the opposition that they could latch onto and bring forward here. How different it is to the days of the Hon. Malcolm Fraser, who not only protect­ed Fraser Island but stopped whaling in this country and had a regard for the environment which was nowhere to be seen in opposition ranks in 2011.

My amendment is to change this pretty poor-quality motion to one that has substan­ce. I recommend it to the Senate. I hope that the Senate will see fit to alter the words in the way that I have proposed when the vote comes up.