Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

Speaking of talkfests, we can see why they do that. Senator Conroy is having a good go from the other side. Labor's talkfests include the 2020 Summit for $2 million, the Henry tax review for $10 million, the tax summit for $1 million and the jobs summit, but with hardly any outcomes. Here are two the people of Australia were absolutely enamoured of: Fuelwatch and GROCERYchoice! Weren't they great? Remember those, colleagues? Fuelwatch was going to fix the problem! GROCERYchoice was going to fix the problem! Nearly $30 million was spent setting them up, and then what happened? Any good outcomes? Let me see. No. Oh, gosh. What happened? They were dumped—$30 million and they were dumped. I am sure there are plenty of people in regional communities who think that $30 million could have been much better spent out in the regions, but no; we had it for Fuelwatch and GROCERYchoice.

Then, of course, there is Senator Conroy's NBN. What was that? Was it $4.7 billion to start with, blown out to more than $50 billion? The other thing is: was there ever a proper business case to justify the spending? Let me see, colleagues. Guess what the answer is: clearly no. This is yet another example of policy on the run from this government, which is simply inept. It cannot run the country. I have people saying to me they just wish we had a grown-up government that was able to run the country properly.

We saw the absolute debacle of the live cattle export trade. The fact that the government, panicked and on the run, shut down the live export trade was absolutely appalling and an indictment of this government, and it was yet another example of the government's complete lack of understanding of regional Australia. I say to those on the other side that if they had been travelling around during the inquiry, talking to the people on the ground and seeing how that stupid, stupid decision affected people in their homes and businesses then they would know that they are simply inept.

In all of this, we also see the government promise 64 GP superclinics. They have delivered 19 and scrapped two in the process. Here is my particular favourite—this one I love. We were talking about waste, mismanagement and government being inept. The government sold the parliament­ary billiard tables for $5,000 and then spent $102,500 finding out whether we got true value for money. If that does not encapsulate the absolutely inept nature of this government and its absolute inability to run the country properly, I do not know what does.

What really gets to people is being lied to. They really are starting to get hot under the collar, because every single time they turn around something else comes out from the government that is yet another backflip, another lie or another untruth, and they are sick of it. These are people out there in the communities—particularly, as I say, in regional communities—that I am talking to and that are trying to bring up their children, run their families, homes or businesses and instil in their children good ethics about how not to lie, how to be straight and how to tell the truth, and then they look at this government and every single time they turn around there seems to be another untruth.

I know some of my colleagues have raised these already, but as examples of the fact that you cannot trust this government these are absolute corkers. When it comes to the private health insurance legislation, we look at the then health minister, Nicola Roxon, saying on 24 February 2009:

The Government is firmly committed to retaining the existing private health insurance rebates.

Mr Kevin Rudd said on 25 February:

The Private Health Insurance Rebate policy remains unchanged and will remain unchanged.

This is Mr Rudd again, in 2007:

Both my Shadow Minister for Health, Nicola Roxon, and I have made clear on many occasions this year that Federal Labor is committed to retaining the existing private health insurance rebates, including the 30 per cent general rebate and the 35 and 40 per cent rebates for older Australians.

One perhaps thinks that if Mr Rudd had got a few more votes then maybe we would not be having this, but who would know? That is a story for another day that I suspect may well come back another day. Then we look at the now Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, saying back in 2005:

The truth is that I never had a secret plan to scrap the private health insurance rebate … For all Australians who wanted to have private health insurance, the private health insurance rebate would have remained under a Labor government. I gave an iron-clad guarantee of that during the election.

The difference between Tony "rock solid, iron-clad" Abbott and me is that when I make an "iron-clad commitment", I actually intend on keeping it.

Absolutely extraordinary. They are the words out of the mouth of the woman who is now the Prime Minister of Australia, who has put the private health insurance legislation in front of us today.

So how on earth can anybody across this country believe anything this shambolic Labor government says? They heard those words coming from the Prime Minister in 2005. Obviously she was telling an untruth, because we now have changes to private health insurance in front of us. What does that do for people? That twigs another memory and another recognition from before the last election which goes something like, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.' This is the Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard. What are we having in about 109 days from now? A carbon tax. What is that carbon tax going to do? It is going to hurt every Australian, and it is going to hurt regional Australians harder than anyone else. It is going to hurt our farmers harder than virtually anyone else, with fuel, electricity, fertiliser and transport costs right across the board, and those farmers have nowhere to pass those costs onto. That is only a little more than 100 days away. We sit on this side of the chamber looking at the other side, at the government, every day and saying: 'You are appalling. You have no ability to run the country. You are completely inept.'

We see again with this piece of legislation in front of us the inability of this Labor government to properly think things through, to properly look at the consequences of its actions and to properly provide decent, sound, well-thought-through policy for the people of this nation. Colleagues, I tell you what: Australians around this country are fast, fast coming to the conclusion that this government is unable to run this country and it is time for a change.