Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Gillard Labor government have focused on governing and legislating in the interests of the nation and their record speaks for itself. Senator Polley went through a number of achievements and one of those achievements which cannot be ignored is the number of jobs which have been created. Some 960,000 jobs have been created since we were first elected while 28 million people have been added to unemployment queues around the rest of the world. That is incredibly significant because in the Labor Party we know that, through having a job, you can have a livelihood and a level of prosperity, a social and economic stability in your life and for your family. That comes from employment and the dignity that work provides. Our record on jobs speaks for itself and shows very much how good governance leads to good outcomes for people right across Australia.

On the economic front there have been a number of achievements by this government—low interest rates, tax cuts, low inflation, low spending, savings, seizing the opportunities which have come about from living in the Asian century. That is very significant for Australia, as we find ourselves in the Asian region. Also there is greater protection, more agreements and fewer disputes with workers. We have given unfair dismissal protection to some 4.5 million Australian workers, many of whom are often women. There are 3.3 million Australians covered by over 24,000 agreements and industrial disputes on average are about one third of the rate they were under the John Howard Work Choices era. Those are just a few of the incredible achievements.

I want to compare the Gillard Labor government's focus on governing and legislating in the interests of the nation compared to the Liberal-National alternative. They govern by slogans which ignore the complex issues with platitudes and empty rhetoric. We have seen slogans bandied across various places thus far, and some members—the more intelligent members of the Liberal and National parties—must cringe when they see complex policies delivered in three-liner slogans. This has in no place been clearer than in the opposition ignoring the expert advice of military, civil society and policy experts who say that the old and cruel approach the Howard government took to people smuggling not only will not work but also will endanger our relationship with our nearest neighbour and will treat our most important regional partner with contempt, all for the sake of trotting out a simple issue that completely ignores the complex issue of asylum seekers and people-smuggling. In doing so, the Liberal-National party goes further, to treat the electorate with contempt, to ignore the fact that the electorate cannot deal with anything more than a slogan. Not only do they treat with contempt our regional partner, with whom we need to continue to develop our bilateral relationship in a positive way, but also they treat the electorate with contempt.

The Liberals advocated for government to abdicate its environmental responsibilities not so long ago by opposing sensible reform of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. They are content to ignore the role federal government has to play to ensure that developments are environmentally sound, all for the sake of at any cost pleasing their Liberal Premier mates. This is another clear area where the opposition have it wrong.

Let us move to some of the more recent rhetoric—it is not even recent; it has been going on for some time—concerning respect. Probably the most damaging of all the Liberal and National policies has been the denigration of government, not just of this government but of the office of government. Under the leadership of Mr Abbott, Senator Abetz and Mr Hockey, the Liberal-National party has made acceptable, and has made ordinary, language and conduct that is as extraordinary as it is appalling. Mr Hockey, a man who would purport to be the alternative or next Treasurer of this country, said of the Prime Minister on Twitter that she has never deserved respect and will never receive it. That is absolutely abhorrent. It is appalling language to be used not only by people who hold office themselves but against the Prime Minister, the highest level office in this nation.

I believe that everybody is entitled to basic levels of respect and dignity. Every person is entitled to basic levels of civility. It is our responsibility as community leaders not just to maintain that level of civility but to model appropriate behaviour. It is our responsibility to hold ourselves to higher standards—to show that we can disagree without denigrating others, and that policy can be bigger than a person.

In this climate, where the supposed leaders in the Liberal-National party are telling people that they need not respect the holders of the highest public offices in this land, is it any wonder that we hear from others, such as shock jocks like Howard Sattler and Alan Jones, who feel that they can also abandon their own responsibility?

The question is: where does it start? It starts with comments and slogans coming out of the opposition. They then get repeated on the airwaves right across the country, and repeated continuously by some of those shock jocks—people who need to take a good look at themselves as well, when we talk about respect and about how they contribute to this denigration of the offices of government, because they certainly do. While I do recognise the recent sacking of Howard Sattler, I think Alan Jones has had equally bad if not worse things to say in relation to the office of Prime Minister in this country.

There has been an ongoing denigration of that office. This has been done by the opposition. It has been done by those shock-jock media outlets, as I call them, and it is absolutely appalling. It is appalling for us as citizens of Australia who listen to this day in, day out, but it is also appalling for the next generation of young Australians to learn that that is the bar for the way we treat each other and how we show respect for our democracy, our rule of law and our whole way of operating our parliamentary system in Australia. It is pretty appalling, and I certainly feel embarrassed to see that kind of behaviour in our Australian political landscape.

When our always robust political debates move from wit and colour to pure and simple bottom-feeding, lowest-common-denominator insults, you know very much that there is a problem. When the Leader of the Opposition feels entitled to stand in front of a banner outside Parliament House that describes the Prime Minister as a witch and thereby legitimises those words, you know that there is a problem. When the most disgusting insults are circulated as an in-joke on a menu at a Liberal Party fundraiser and the member responsible for either the event or happily taking the money says, 'No questions asked; thank you very much,' you know there is a problem. When shock jocks are content to question the most personal aspects of a Prime Minister's life, or to use incendiary language that urges violence— (Time expired)