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

This afternoon, I want to talk about a very grave matter of public importance, which is that, if the opinion polls are to be believed, by the end of this year we will have Labor governments in every state and territory of Australia, including the national government. I have to say that I do not believe those opinion polls—although it is silly for politicians to stick their heads in the sand. Quite clearly, the Labor Party do believe the opinion polls. The hubris and arrogance that they are already showing indicates that they believe that they are simply the government-in-waiting, and no better demonstration of that could exist than the disgraceful speech by Mr Rudd yesterday at the luncheon for the Canadian Prime Minister.

To use that opportunity to start making political points, to get down to crass politics at a luncheon which has traditionally been non-partisan, I think not only demonstrates Mr Rudd’s arrogance and immaturity but also puts the lie to him allegedly being a diplomat. No-one with any diplomatic training would pre-empt our esteemed visitor, the Canadian Prime Minister, who was here to make a presentation from the Canadian people to the Australian people. It was gazumped and pre-empted by Mr Rudd’s silly story about his forebears coming out in the First Fleet and attending plays in Sydney. Big deal! Many Australians have relatives and forebears who came out with the First Fleet, and they are all as proud of it as Mr Rudd is—and so am I. But to use his speech yesterday to gazump and pre-empt a presentation from the Canadian people to the Australian people shows his arrogance and immaturity and the fact that the Labor Party are already counting the numbers post election.

Mr Rudd, as well as allegedly being a diplomat—which clearly from yesterday he is not—also claims to be a fiscal conservative. Why? Because the focus groups told him that that has a good ring about it. Let us have a look at Mr Rudd’s fiscal conservatism. First of all, he wants to rob the Future Fund of $5 billion to set up a broadband system that the private sector is very happy to be doing as part of their business. So $5 billion, which was last year’s surplus, is out of the way in one go. Mr Rudd is also promising to give everyone Commonwealth dental treatment. The cost of that, as was clearly pointed out in the other place, is $5 billion annually. So in just two initiatives, Mr Rudd has already spent twice the surplus from last year, and that says nothing about all his other extravagant, arrogant promises and all the other commitments he is making for roads, rail, health and everything else. So the fiscal conservative tag is only a tag; it is not genuine.

I despair of wall-to-wall Labor governments because I have seen the arrogance of Labor governments, particularly in my home state of Queensland. Remember that the Queensland Labor Party is the party that has spawned Mr Beattie, Mr Rudd and Mr Swan, the would-be Treasurer. It has spawned some excellent people like the previous Acting Deputy President, Senator Moore, but it has also spawned people like Bill D’Arcy, who is currently in jail on child sex offences, and Keith Wright, who was the Labor leader in Queensland in the state parliament, who is in jail on child sex offences. Keith Wright was also a member of the federal ALP in this place for a period of time.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Andrew Laming!

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

I hear ‘Andrew Laming’ over there. Thank you for the interjection, Senator Marshall. Why would Andrew Laming be mentioned? Andrew Laming has been under investigation for the past six months, an investigation instituted by the wife of the person who is now the Deputy Premier of Queensland. A member of the Labor Party six months ago instituted this inquiry as a police officer. It has already been demonstrated clearly that the two other people under investigation have been cleared, and one can only wonder to what depths the Labor Party will sink in their march towards federal government.

The Queensland Labor Party has also spawned Karen Ehrmann, who is in jail for electoral fraud. It has also spawned Merri Rose, a trusted adviser and close confidante of Premier Peter Beattie and a minister in his government for many years. She has just been released from jail on blackmail charges. It has also spawned people like Gordon Nuttall, who is under investigation for fraud and corruption and who was a minister until a short while ago in the Queensland government. It has also spawned people like Pat Purcell, who has allegedly broken the law by physically assaulting his staff. This is the Labor government we have in Queensland, spawning those people. I will not go into Brian Burke, Theophanous, Milton Orkopoulos, Bob Collins and Peter Duncan, some of whom have not yet been convicted. I do not suggest that they are guilty of charges, but certainly the charges against Orkopoulos and Bob Collins are very, very serious.

This is the party that has spawned these people. I acknowledge that there are many, many good people in the Labor Party; I am not suggesting anything for a moment about any of them. But I am suggesting that the party that gets us premiers like Brian Burke and gets us ministers like Merri Rose, Keith Wright and Bill D’Arcy is the same party which, in my state of Queensland, less than two months ago attempted to take away from Queenslanders the right to free speech. The Labor Party in Queensland legislated in the Queensland parliament to make it a criminal offence for a council to have a plebiscite on its future. Not only would it be an offence, but any councillor who had the temerity to suggest a poll would be fined and, if he did not pay the fine, would be thrown into jail and would be made to pay. This is the Labor Party. Fortunately, the Howard government used its constitutional powers to override the Queensland parliament in that particular piece of legislation so that it is no longer an offence to have a poll in Queensland on the future of a council. But the Labor Party, in the most undemocratic piece of legislation ever brought before any parliament in Australia in its parliamentary history, tried to stop Queenslanders from having a say—on pain of imprisonment, if anyone should contrive against that.

This Queensland Labor Party has spawned those people I mentioned—and Mr Rudd. Mr Rudd and Mr Swan have been around for a long time, as has Anna Bligh, the new Premier, and all three of them were around when it was as clear as the nose on your face that Queensland would have problems with water in the future. But Mr Rudd, Mr Goss, Ms Bligh and Wayne Swan did nothing about it. In fact, the previous National Party government had put aside a bit of land for a dam, and the Goss government, advised by Mr Rudd, took that off the burner.

Have a look at Queensland—the state from which Mr Rudd and Mr Swan hale—and the public health scandals. Remember Dr Patel? He is on charges currently—if they can ever find him. Mr Beattie had the opportunity to bring him back from the USA but declined that because he himself was having an election a few weeks later, so they did not bother to get him back. Dr Patel is alleged to have caused the deaths of many Queenslanders. Why? Because the Labor government in Queensland cannot be trusted with administering even a health system. In spite of the billions and billions of dollars given to the Queensland government by the federal government for health and other matters, the Queensland government have not got a health system which you would feel safe in. The Dr Death scandal is one that will hound Mr Beattie and Ms Bligh to their political graves.

The Traveston dam travesty is another indication of the failure of the Labor Party in Queensland to properly administer its jurisdiction. Anna Bligh has been caught telling mistruths about the Senate report in relation to that dam. I saw a media release from Anna Bligh the other day saying that the Senate report into the Traveston dam ‘vindicates the Queensland government’. It did anything but vindicate the Queensland government. It was full of criticism. But Ms Bligh, the new Premier of our state, could not even distinguish truth from untruth on that issue.

This is the sort of area from which the Labor Party is launching itself into operation of the federal government. So, if the opinion polls are to be believed, every government in Australia will be held by Labor. You can imagine the result. The GST will go up because there will be no-one to stop it, no-one to fight against it.

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

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

The Labor Party have already, on the two issues that I have given you, spent twice the budget, so where will we get the money from? Up will go the GST. The sorts of things Labor does in government are demonstrated by the council amalgamations issue. I will not talk about the amalgamations as such, but there are transition committees to work between councils that are going to be amalgamated. What comprises those committees? Two members of one of the councils to be amalgamated, two members of the other council to be an amalgamated and, according to the evidence given to our committee, three unionists, only two of whom are from one of those cities and the other is from Brisbane, some 3,000 kilometres away.

That transition committee is top-heavy with unionists. I asked any witness: who has actually elected these unionists? Nobody knows. They are not elected people, but they are there to work through and set the groundwork for the amalgamated councils. In the case of the amalgamation of Townsville, my home city, and Thuringowa, there are two representatives from the Townsville City Council—Labor controlled; two representatives from the independent Thuringowa council; and three unionists. So you would not be surprised, Mr Deputy Speaker, to find that any vote in that committee has been determined by five Labor votes to two independent votes. This is the sort of activity the Labor Party engages in in my home state Queensland, so you can imagine what will happen if the Labor Party also has the federal government after the end of the year.

These things should be and, as I know from my travels around my state, are matters of very grave importance to the people of Queensland and, indeed, to the people of Australia. I am concerned at the thought of all governments joining together to do things like increasing the GST. Stopping free speech as they did in Queensland, having a health system that is just plain dangerous and neglecting infrastructure, as Labor governments have done, are all things that will be repeated. It is not a question of listening to what Mr Rudd says. It is very much a case of seeing what Labor governments have done in power. In power, they had interest rates at 17½ per cent on home loan mortgages. I paid 17½ per cent—and one day I shall table in this parliament my bank statement to show that. Labor talk about low interest rates but, when they are in power, see what they do: you have interest rates at 17½ per cent. (Time expired)