Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

There is no doubt that this government is the most chronically dysfunctional in our nation's history. This Labor regime will go down as the government that finally made the Whitlam Labor government look good. The current debacle is the Whitlam experiment on steroids. This is a government whose strategy is twofold: first, buy themselves back into power whilst attacking Mr Abbott. Labor are mortgaging the long-term future of Australians in a desperate bid to buy their short-term personal future. What has happened to date is bad enough; just wait until Labor start on the superannuation of ordinary Australians, raiding the personal future of individual Australians for Labor's short-term benefit. Superannuation will simply be yet another broken promise.

From the carbon tax to same sex marriage to the surplus, we have a government that will say one thing before an election and then do exactly the opposite afterwards. We have a Prime Minister that was the chief defence counsel for Mr Craig Thomson for year after year and who praised him and said that she hoped he would be the member for Dobell for many years to come.

Indeed, we were told by her spin doctor Mr McTernan and others that she gave her best ever, most powerful speech to the parliament recently. It was not about her vision for the country, it was not about a policy issue about which she felt strongly. No, it was to defend none other than Mr Peter Slipper in a pathetic attempt to attack Mr Abbott, a speech that we now know was actually written by a man, yet she claims she will call misogyny whenever she sees it.

This is a government that has seen a record increase in the cost of living for our fellow Australians. On a personal basis, the Prime Minister calls for loyalty to her and her government. One assumes she means the same loyalty she extended to Mr Rudd and Senator Trish Crossin. In relation to Senator Crossin, she says, 'It was the captain's call.' Well, so was Mr Slipper. That was also a captain's call. Each time the Prime Minister makes a captain's call or makes a decision, the Australian people say her judgement needs to be questioned and they question her judgement.

In relation to Senator Crossin, let us not pretend that this was about a long-term concern by the Prime Minister to get an Aboriginal into the parliament. She had that opportunity with Mr Warren Mundine from New South Wales, where there was a vacancy available, and she deliberately sidelined Mr Mundine to get Mr Bob Carr out of naphthalene and parachute him into the Senate. We, on this side, have already had a distinguished senator, Neville Bonner, and the great local member in Ken Wyatt in the House of Representatives. Gillard thought she had to play catch-up. But what she did yet again in her clumsy way was to say, 'I am going to overcome an injustice by creating another injustice.' Indeed, if Senator Crossin was an employee of Ms Gillard, she would be off to Fair Work Australia for unfair dismissal and the damages would be flowing.

This is typical of this government. The Prime Minister will say one thing and demand a certain standard of the employers of this country and then do exactly the opposite in relation to the people she is in charge of. Labor are so good at saying to us, 'Do as we say, but then not as we do.' The government's failures are legion and I am sure others contributing to this debate will be able to point to other examples.

I want to say to the Australian people that there is good news in all this because there is a better way. The coalition does have a plan to deliver a stable and prosperous economy and a safe and secure Australia. On the current figures we would have the budget in surplus. Why? Because we are fiscally responsible. We know that you cannot borrow your way out of debt and we agree with Ms Gillard who, in one of her lucid moments, acknowledged the fact and the self-evident truth that getting back to surplus is 'necessary to relieve cost-of-living pressures on families'.

We agree and that is why we say the budget should be in surplus, not because of some economic theory but because it reduces the cost of living for Australian families. Ms Gillard said that failure to bring the budget back into surplus was not an option. We agree, but of course now we know that failure for this government is in fact an option. We would also abolish the carbon tax. That would see a decrease in the cost-of-living pressures for families, keeping in mind that their electricity bills have increased by 15.2 per cent since the introduction of the carbon tax.

The Labor Party go on about job security. Well, if they had any concern for the manufacturing sector, they would see the positive nature of abolishing the carbon tax. Every single Australian made car has a reverse tariff of $400 per unit on it, courtesy of the carbon tax. So every motor vehicle imported from South Korea and Japan has a $400 head start on price competitiveness compared to Australian made cars—and Labor claim that they are somehow concerned about jobs.

In all of this, there is not a squeak from the union bosses who get hundreds of dollars from each of the manufacturing workers of this country each year as union fees. Where are these union officials? Why are they not standing up for Australian manufacturing jobs and saying that the carbon tax should be abolished? I will tell you why: because they are more concerned about their Labor Party preselection for the future rather than looking after the interests of Australian workers. It is not only in the manufacturing sector. The dairy industry is another industry where family farms are being hit with an impost with this carbon tax of about $10,000 per annum.

Our positive plan also includes implementing a properly funded, paid parental leave scheme because we believe that such a scheme is a genuine workplace entitlement and not a social security benefit. We will cut green and red tape and save small business about $1 billion per annum, which will see them being able to reduce their prices and, as a result, reduce the cost of living for Australians. We will secure our borders, saving Australians billions of dollars and, might I add, delivering justice to those waiting patiently in refugee camps around the world.

We have an affordable infrastructure program to improve the roads for our nation. We are, in fact, internally stable. There is no doubt that Mr Abbott will be leading us to the next election. We have a clear plan. We have solid, stable leadership. We have a vision for this country, knowing that Australia can do so much better than she is doing now. The thing that is holding Australia back is not the Australian people, it is not the environment and it is not the economy: it is the government of this country that has so failed the Australian people. We, as a coalition, look forward to making 14 September 2013 the real Clean Up Australia Day.