Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I know that Senator Scarr's made a partisan comment about the Whitlam government, but the Whitlam government had ambition for the country. I understand we may differ about what that ambition meant and where it led, but at least it had ambition for the country and—what are we?—45 years later the changes that the Whitlam government made are still remembered. Nobody in 45 years will remember the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government, I can assure you of that.

It's impossible to look at the Governor-General's speech and the achievements and the commitments that we have made as a new government without understanding what historically framed it—the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government was characterised by complacency. It was a government that was characterised by policy laziness; a government that was characterised by a deep sense of entitlement. The objective of that government was simply to hold government itself and for the preferment and the privilege of those closest to them. It was a government that allowed senior members of the government and backbenchers to retreat into a nasty, far-right, US-Trump-style extremism. You can see some of those people are still here, amongst those opposite. The kind of politics espoused by Senator Rennick, Senator Antic and others is a retreat into nativist, Trump-style, derivative—I have to say pretty boring—extremist politics, in an attempt to scoop up potential branch members. Senator Scarr knows what I'm talking about because they were recruiting them in Queensland today. The slogan was 'Keep the cookers out' a few weeks ago. The problem is, in the Queensland Liberal National Party, it's too late. The stable door is open. The horse has bolted. The cookers are in charge of significant parts of the Queensland Liberal National Party.

That's the legacy of that government. Rather than do what Howard did, what former senator Boswell did or what conservatives of courage, commitment and principle did, which was to say, 'We're going to close the door to extremism,' the Morrison government fanned the flames of extremism. That's what they did in order to bolster a few right-wing voters here and a few branch members there. They made a craven attempt to promote far-right extremism, as the former prime minister did—it has been very well documented—in his preferring the candidacy of Ms Deves in Warringah. The problem with doing that is, if you do it when you're in government and you don't reflect on it properly and learn the lessons, it shapes what you're like in opposition, not just this term but next term, the term after that and the term after that, until you actually internalise and learn the lessons and make the hard choices. I'm happy to dish out this advice because, terrified as I am that they might actually take the advice, I know that they're not capable of following through.

What it meant for ordinary Australians is that we had a decade of low wage growth. We had a decade of low capital investment. We had a decade where we diminished our position in the world in a way that undercut and undermined our national interest. None of those things mattered to the people opposite because they weren't faintly concerned with the national interest. We had a decade where the fiscal position of the Commonwealth continued to deteriorate until after the COVID crisis. We were a trillion dollars in debt with nothing to show for it, with a structural deficit as far as the eye can see and with terminating measures in the budget that meant that commitments that the government made to the Australian people were only funded for one year, two years or three years, further undermining the position of the budget. We had nothing to show for it in terms of infrastructure, in terms of social progress, in terms of productivity measures and in terms of the things that would make life better for ordinary Australian families. We saw Medicare undermined, the health system in disrepair and energy policy failure.

The government has had to set about working its way through dealing with these challenges. In terms of our strategic position, the damage that this government did to our position amongst Pacific islands leaders is utterly shameful. It was characterised, by Mr Dutton and Mr Abbott, by making jokes at the expense of Pacific island people, about climate change, when they were caught out by the famous boom mike. The problem with that moment was not that it was a mistake, a sort of joke, a sort of an aside that didn't really characterise what they thought. The problem was it characterised what they thought, and Pacific island leaders and Pacific island people saw that.

So we're engaged in this massive effort in the region, the Pacific and the Indo-Pacific, in terms of our strategic position, in terms of our global position, of catch-up and patch-up, an enormous effort, in governance terms. All I can say, really, is that Australians are entitled to expect much more from their government, not a government that rorts public funds in its own partisan interest.

Their recent criticisms of some of the funded commitments that the government made in opposition, that were specific commitments, they thought were very clever, because they said isn't the government doing what the last government did—utterly betraying their lack of understanding of the government's principles themselves. There is a deep difference. You need to understand it. Wander down to the Auditor-General's office and I'm sure he will explain to you. There's a deep difference between what it is that a political party commits to, in its election program, and what are decisions of government.

The problem for Mr Dutton and all of his friends is that this was a government that utterly perverted the processes of government in its own partisan interest. The list goes on and on, but nothing more symbolises the incapacity of the Liberal and National parties to understand the position that they put the country in than the choice they made after the election, the choice to elect Mr Dutton as the leader. Nobody—unless, I suppose, they'd actually gone and elected Mr Tudge as the opposition leader—symbolises more the failures and the problems, and the lack of moral capacity and the lack of a sense of the national interest, amongst the current cohort of Liberal and National Party MPs than does Mr Dutton. And that is the problem.

People on the other side may well want to defend the previous government, but nothing symbolises more what Mr Tudge said in 2016 than when he—I was quite struck by listening to this in question time. I'd forgotten about it. In 2016, when he was talking about their patently illegal robodebt scheme, he said:

We'll find you, we'll track you down and you will have to repay those debts and you may end up in prison.

They were administering an illegal scheme to some of the most vulnerable people in Australia, who didn't owe the government a dollar. He created the impression in their minds that he would hunt them down and that they may well end up in prison. You can't imagine a crueller, more cavalier approach to the most vulnerable Australians.

There are choices in front of people. The opposition can choose this week and over the next few weeks to reject the government's National Reconstruction Fund, the mandate forum, the chance in this country to rebuild our manufacturing sector. But this opposition are currently saying no. Again, it's about the national security interest, rebuilding our manufacturing capability for democratic cohesion, for all sorts of reasons—for economic reasons and for social ones. We've got a chance to do this and these guys over here say, no, they will not be able to go back into regional electorates and defend that position.

While the track record of governments isn't very strong in by-elections, over our history, the people of Aston have a choice too. It's a vote for or against Mr Dutton that we'll see in Aston. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.