Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Carr, shout all you like, but I have actually taped the first two episodes and I can send them to you, if you want just a bit of a reminder about the part you and most of your friends on the front bench played in the atrocious disloyalty and dishonesty that has been so clearly exposed in those two episodes of The Killing Season about the Labor Party and how it operates.

And, Mr Acting Deputy President Back, why would you expect better from the Labor Party? I just have to divert a fraction and mention that I read an article in the Hobart Mercury the other day from a dear old friend of mine, former Senator Margaret Reynolds. She was a Labor senator based in Townsville when I first entered the Senate. And I liked Margaret; I was disappointed when she left the north and went down to Tasmania. But she wrote this article for the Hobart Mercury berating the major political parties for the way they select Senate candidates. I was obliged to reply to the Hobart MercuryI suspect they did not print it, but I did reply—and I said, 'My old friend Margaret Reynolds was clearly talking about the Labor Party, not the Liberal or National parties,' because, as I pointed out, there is a difference. We have just been through a preselection for a senator in Queensland, and we were very fortunate in having Senator Jo Lindgren elected. But I have to tell you: Senator Lindgren was not selected on a 'captain's pick' or by a couple of union cabals getting together and determining who they would put into the position; Senator Lindgren actually faced over 300 ordinary Australians who make up the selection process of the LNP in Queensland, and she contested against eight other candidates all of whom were people of quality. And Senator Lindgren, through her own abilities, and through the presentation she made, was selected. So I said to Margaret Reynolds, 'You might be talking about the Labor Party, where the Northern Territory branch of the Labor Party preselects a sitting senator and Julia Gillard comes in over the top and says: "Forget about the Labor Party; forget about the ordinary people who select this in the Northern Territory; I want that person."' So the difference could not be more stark. That is why I say you would not know where the Labor Party is coming from.

I might mention, as to my own last preselection, that I had been a sitting senator for some time, but there were actually 15 people opposing me. We had a preselection panel of over 450 people. I am delighted to say that I won on the first ballot, and I thank the LNP for that; I am always grateful to them for that. But that shows the stark difference between how the Liberal and National parties make economic decisions—make any decisions—and how the Labor Party does.

I will get back to the bill—just in case there is anyone listening to this and they might be interested in what this bill, the Labor 2013-14 Budget Savings (Measures No. 1) Bill 2014, is all about. The Labor Party introduced a carbon tax. They knew it would put up the cost of living of ordinary Australians. So, in an attempt to in some way ameliorate that bad policy decision of the carbon tax, they did say: 'We will give carbon tax related personal income tax cuts, just to compensate for the increased cost of living'—which they knew would happen with the carbon tax. They based that on a floating price for the carbon tax of $29 per tonne. Originally, when the carbon tax came in, the price was at $25.4 per tonne. It was going to float up to $29. And so the Labor Party said, 'We'll introduce these tax cuts to compensate.' But, lo and behold, the Labor Party suddenly realised how corrupt the market was for carbon tax permits, and they realised that their floating price estimate of $29 a tonne was not going to really achieve more than about $12 a tonne—less than half of what was originally expected. So the Labor Party, in a flash of economic responsibility, said: 'Well, the price is not going to go up quite as much as we thought; therefore, those personal income tax cuts that we were going to give won't now be necessary. So, as a budget repair measure, we're going to cancel them.' So, Senator Whish-Wilson, the Labor Party actually acknowledged that and said it was a tax that did not have the same substantive underlying reason as it originally did. So the Labor Party announced that they were going to get rid of these cuts.

Having promised that before the last election, they did a typical Labor-Greens thing: promise something before the election, and after the election come in and do the exact opposite. Twice the coalition has attempted to introduce Labor's removal of their promised income tax cuts. We have tried twice already in this parliament to allow the Labor Party to honour their commitment. Twice we have failed. But I am pleased to say—and all credit where credit is due—that the Labor Party are now, fortuitously, and sensibly, I might say, going to support this government measure, which is purely and simply the proposal that the Labor Party put before the last election.

The coalition made a commitment before the last election, and that commitment was broad; it was clear; it was sensible; it was direct. Nobody—no Australian voter—could have misunderstood what the coalition's principal election promise was before the last election. It was: to fix the budget. We all know that when the Labor Party came into power they had a credit, $60 billion, in the 'piggy bank'. The $60 billion was there for the incoming Labor government because of the good work of Peter Costello and John Howard in the Howard government over many years. The Howard government had paid off previous Labor governments' debts and, more than that, they had put some money away for a rainy day. There were $60 billion sitting there waiting for the new Labor government.

It took the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government only a few months to blow that $60 billion and run up a debt which, if it had not been addressed, would have got up to around $700 billion. Senator Whish-Wilson is happy about that, I guess. He must be, because the Greens political party supported the Gillard and Rudd governments every time they took measures that would blow that out to $700 billion. Senator Cormann might help me here. That means we are currently paying—how much a day in interest, Senator Cormann?