Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

At the request of Senator Moore, I move:

That the Senate condemns the Coalition for its failure to honour its pre election commitments to the Australian people.

Today is just short of 100 days since the election, and I think what we have seen since that time is a very clear indication of what sort of government the Abbott government is and what sort of government it will be. This is a government that is time and time again, in the short period since the election, walking away from its pre-election commitments to the Australian people. This is not the government it said it would be. It has been very clear from the commencement of the government that this is not the government it said it would be.

There are many, many areas which we could go to to demonstrate this. Perhaps we should start with the biggest issue of the moment and certainly one of the biggest issues facing my home state of South Australia, as well as the state of Victoria and workers around this country, and that is in relation to the car industry and the extraordinarily sad, distressing announcement by General Motors-Holden that they intend to cease manufacturing in Australia. I think it is very interesting if you go back to look at some of the things that the coalition told Australians before the election. They said:

The Coalition is committed to supporting a viable automotive sector in Australia for the long term. We have always worked closely with the car industry and will continue to do so.

Yes, we really saw that in this last week, didn't we? Do you know what we saw? We saw the government first say to Holden and to the rest of the automotive sector, 'Not only are we going to take $500 million off you between now and 2015; we are also going to put you into a period of uncertainty by sending the prospect of any further assistance off to the Productivity Commission review.' What did the government do? They said to Holden, 'Don't make a decision prior to the PC reporting.' But that did not suit the game plan of some of those opposite.

So what have we seen instead from the people who told Australians that they were committed to supporting a viable automotive sector in Australia for the long term and that they had always worked closely with the car industry and would continue to do so? We have seen since Thursday of last week senior economic ministers in this government backgrounding the newspapers and the ABC that a decision had already been made. What extraordinary economic irresponsibility that a minister of the Crown, in the context of a negotiation around further industry support in the years ahead, would actually lean on a company by anonymously backgrounding the newspapers that a decision had already been made. That was a blatant attempt to strongarm the negotiations from some on that side—including, I would suggest, the Treasurer of this nation, who recognises that he did the wrong thing when it came to GrainCorp and needed to make what he saw as a hard decision on auto assistance in order to prove his credentials. What we saw on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, and on, was continued backgrounding by ministers in this government against General Motors-Holden. But, as if that irresponsibility were not enough, we then saw the Treasurer of this country stand up in the other place and goad General Motors-Holden to make a decision: 'Are you in or are you out?' Well, he got what he wanted: he got a decision.

The chaos that is this government is really demonstrated by two documents in this whole sad debacle, in which the price is paid by Australian workers: first, the Acting Prime Minister of the country demanding the day before the closure decision that Holden make a decision; and then the media release from the Minister for Industry, in which he said, 'We are disappointed that Holden did not wait for the conclusion of the Productivity Commission review before making a decision.' So the Acting Prime Minister demanded that a decision be made; the industry minister, who I suggest was the only minister who was actually advocating for this industry and the workers and the families of those workers in this industry, made it very clear he was not in the cart either for the overt strongarming by the Acting Prime Minister and the Treasurer or for the leaking from cabinet colleagues. This is from the government that said in opposition that they were committed to supporting a viable automotive sector and that they had always worked closely with the car industry and would continue to do so.

But, of course, this is not the only example of the way in which this government, in less than 100 days, has sprinted away from commitments that it made to the Australian people. Perhaps one of the best examples of that comes from Mr Pyne and Mr Abbott when it comes to schools. I think we can all remember in the course of the last few years the different positions that have been articulated by the coalition when it comes to schools and the former Labor government's Better Schools reform.

I can recall Mr Abbott and Mr Pyne attacking the Better Schools Plan, calling it a 'conski' up hill and down dale. They said they did not like it; it was a con and a dreadful thing. They said it was outrageous and they wanted to keep the existing system, which, of course, guaranteed unfairness in our society and unfairness in our schools and which is broken and does not address what is required for schools in Australia in the 21st century. That was the system that Mr Abbott and Mr Pyne were supporting. Then, all of a sudden, in the lead-up to the election, they had this miraculous conversion, in which suddenly Mr Abbott made it very clear that he really loved the Better Schools Plan. After bagging and criticising that plan, suddenly the Liberal Party loved it—they suddenly loved equity; they suddenly loved making sure that students around this country could receive the same level of resourcing plus loadings. They suddenly realised that it was needed to make sure every child in every school could be the best that they could possibly be, because that is the fundamental principle at the heart of the former Labor government's Better Schools Plan—that you invest in ways that ensure that every child in every school can be the best that they can be. This was the model that those opposite panned and criticised until, in the lead-up to the election, they suddenly had a conversion. They told the Australian people: 'Guess what, we love the Better Schools Plan; we love it. And, guess what, we are on a unity ticket. Isn't that fantastic? You can vote for us and it will be exactly the same. We will honour all the commitments.'

Anybody watching what occurred in this last month would know that that was a lie. It is a lie that has been partially rectified, because even Tony Abbott realised that it was just too bad, but his intentions were absolutely clear. Post the election, the government—the government that was going to be a grown-up government; the government that promised no surprises—that had said in opposition it would honour all commitments that the then Labor government had entered into had a change of heart. Then we saw Minister Pyne say: 'I do not like the Gonski model; we need to go back to the drawing board. There are no finalised agreements with Victoria, Tasmania and the Catholic sector. It is all Labor's fault.' And then it was all the media's fault, and then he argued that the Howard era SES model was the best model to base a new one on. Then, when everybody across this country, quite reasonably, was completely outraged at the extraordinarily blatant breach of faith—a breach of trust with the Australian people—all of a sudden the Prime Minister had to find a solution. His solution was that they would strike a deal with Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory, but, of course, the details would not be released, though they confirmed that states could pretty well do what they liked with the money. It was an interesting negotiation that went something like this: 'Hello, WA. We would like to send you some money.' 'Oh, yes, that would be great. Thank you very much. Bye.' That was the negotiation for political convenience that occurred on the other side. It had no focus and no transparency on the outcomes for students and parents across the country.

I thought that the day prior to that hasty announcement was very telling. The decision, in which $1.2 billion of taxpayers' money was spent without getting any commitment from the states that they would not reduce funding, did not even go to the cabinet. That is a most important consideration: if you as a federal government are going to put more funding into schools, you want to make sure the states do not simply pull money out. You do not just put money into a leaky bucket. It is very clear that this government has not ensured that the states cannot withdraw money. Poor old Senator Cormann was not even in the room when the decision to spend another $1.2 billion was made—something that someone conveniently leaked to the newspapers. I digress. I thought the most interesting interview that the Prime Minister has done since the election was on the Bolt Report the day before the press conference in which the government threw money at a broken promise in the hope that no-one would notice. He said:

We are going to keep the promise that we actually made, not the promise that some people thought that we made, or the promise that some people might have liked us to make.

What he was saying was: 'You know when I said there is a unity ticket there was a little asterisk and a little footnote at the bottom that said, "Well, we don't actually mean this and we are not actually going to do what Labor would have done." And when I said we will honour all agreements there was also a little asterisk there that said, "Well, actually, we do not mean that because we are going to run a lawyer's argument that the agreements were not really signed."'

It really gave an insight into the sort of Prime Minister that this Prime Minister is. He wants to pretend that he is keeping his commitments and he wants to pretend that is keeping faith, but he is quite happy to make a decision to mislead the Australian people about the commitment that was made. He is quite happy to pretend and mislead people about what commitment was actually made. What he is saying there is: 'You did not get it right.' The reality is that he was breaking his promise and he then lied about whether or not he was breaking the promise.

Another area in which this government is doing something very different to what it promised is its utterances on debt. Prior to the election, you could say there was a fair bit of focus on debt and public finances and, frankly, a lot of lies were told by those opposite about the state of the nation's finances. I predict a lot of lies will be told in the midyear budget update next week, because the political strategy is very clear. On that point, let me make this point: today in question time not a single South Australian or Victorian senator asked the government to outline its plans to help and support workers at Holden plants in their states. What they wanted to do is play politics with the National Broadband Network. That was their priority, and it really says something about this government. They are so anxious to find someone else to blame for not keeping their promises that they have to do an NBN strategic review, create a budget emergency and tell Australians, as the Prime Minister did, 'You heard it wrong.' When it comes to childcare workers, they have to try and get someone else to break their promises because they want them broken.

In question time today, it was very interesting that the focus of the coalition was so much on making a political attack on the National Broadband Network that senators from these states could not be bothered to ask a question about thousands of workers, who must be devastated about the announcement yesterday. It really says something about the values and priorities of this government.

I come back to the issue of debt. We were told before the election that the coalition was the party of no debt. We were told before the election by Mr Abbott that he would lead a government of no debt. Before the election, they said that all debt was bad, that more debt was not the answer and that Australia was drowning in debt. Then, after the election, they went from being the government of no debt to the government of half a trillion dollars worth of debt and now to the government of unlimited debt. In order to be the government of unlimited debt, they had to do a deal with the Australian Greens, the party they described as the 'economic fringe dwellers', to ensure they could get their unlimited debt provision through the parliament.

This is from the Prime Minister who said he would lead a government of no debt. This is from a man who said he would not lead a party that did deals with the Australian Greens. That did not take long to break, did it? 'We are not going to do deals with the Australian Greens, except when they are going to vote for having unlimited debt,' which is something that they never told Australians before the election.

In the last few minutes, I will return to child care. We could talk about boats, about what happened to the 'buy back the boats' policy and the 'turn back the boats' policy and about a government that was supposed to be open and transparent imposing the greatest level of secrecy I think anyone in this chamber has ever seen when it comes to this issue and many other issues, but I want to talk briefly about child care. One of the decisions of the Labor government was to create an Early Years Quality Fund as part of a range of reforms over a number of years to child care. I am the first to say that this is a policy challenge that requires reform over a number of years—more than one or two terms of government—because it is a transformation of the sector. But part of that reform process is recognising that these workers—these educators—are paid far too little for the work they do.

As a nation, if we decide that we want quality child care and want to ensure that our children receive that care from people who have appropriate skills, then we have to be prepared to renumerate them. The former government had the Early Years Quality Fund. This was something that had a lot of support in the community. The coalition said before the election that they would promise to honour the Early Years Quality Fund wage increases. In fact, last week in parliament, the Prime Minister told the chamber that his government would keep its election promise to honour these contracts. He said:

We will absolutely honour all of our commitments, and contracts which have been entered into will be honoured.

Guess what has happened since? They had already factored in the saving from breaking that promise, and, all of a sudden, the Prime Minister has said on the floor of the parliament, clearly not knowing what he was committing to: 'Actually, yes, we're going to do what we said before the election'. And in response everyone has said, 'Oh, no! We have already factored in that saving. He said the wrong thing; he had the wrong brief.' So the minister comes out and says, 'We are inviting you to do the right thing and return the money. We want to break our election commitment, but, actually, we are going to try and get you to do it for us.' What an unbelievably cynical position to take.

This is a government that promised before the election that it would increase accountability and enhance transparency. But what have we seen? We have seen secrecy. We have seen this chamber treated with contempt by ministers on the other side. I understand that there is a bit of argy-bargy in question time, but the minister—particularly the minister who is in the chamber today, Minister Cash—has treated this Senate in question time with absolute contempt. Their essential proposition is: 'I know that in our political tradition question time is where ministers have to answer questions, but—guess what—it is not Friday, so I'm not going to tell you anything.'

Whether it is on education, Australian jobs, the car industry, debt, boats, childcare workers or openness and transparency—and the list could go on—in less than 100 days, we have seen what sort of government this will be. It is a government that walks away from its promises to the Australian people. It is a government that does not honour its commitments and it is a government that breaches faith and trust with the Australian people time and time again. We already know what they are like. (Time expired)