Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Just before I make my speech on this motion, I would like to address some issues from the earlier debate on the motion to take note of answers where I reflected poorly on Senator Kim Carr; I seek to withdraw those remarks.

I will move on now to debate the motion before us:

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

That is quite a brash motion to bring before the Senate when the current government is less than 100 days old. No, we did not rush to a 2020 Summit; we did not invite every celebrity across the land to Parliament House with some butchers paper and some whiteboard markers and seek to map out a legislative agenda. No, you are right; we did not do that. We took a very different approach. We took the adult approach.

Our ministers had been working for a long time whilst in opposition to come up with comprehensive plans of how to deal with the travesty that the former government left us with, and those plans are being rolled out in a very clear, methodical way and we are making a great start. So I think this is great hypocrisy from the former government, the now opposition. I think the Australian people have noticed a stark contrast between the behaviour of the past three governments—the Prime Minister Rudd government, the Prime Minister Gillard government, and the Prime Minister Rudd mark-2 government—and that of the Abbott government.

Our national priorities have also been making excellent progress, and I will run through some of those. As I said, the job of cleaning up Labor's mess is not easy, and will take a long time, but we have made an extremely strong start. What I found most challenging, as I sat and listened to the debate across the chamber over the last few days, is the complete denial and rejection by the now opposition of the effect their hand and their policies and their decisions taken over six years and their approach to a variety of portfolio areas has had on the current state of things. So I think this motion is a bit rich. They might have left it a little longer, but no, they jumped the gun—so eager they are that, less than 100 days in, they think they are going to somehow put their mess at our feet, while we are actually just heads down, working at cleaning it up.

We promised legislation to scrap the carbon tax. I just love it! It has been on the Red for a long time, this legislation to scrap the carbon tax. If you, Senator Farrell or Senator Stephens, were to go out and do a straw poll right across Australia—you could even go to Wycheproof in Victoria; you could go to Cairns, to Burnie, to Kangaroo Island—