Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State and Scrutiny of Government Waste) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Electoral Commission report 2009 redistribution of Queensland into electoral divisions. I note that that includes the Prime Minister’s seat of Griffith. I would like to talk about the Prime Minister and his seat and what might possibly occur in relation to that redistribution. What we have seen is a Prime Minister who in my view is becoming increasingly desperate. He is a Prime Minister who has failed the test of governmental legitimacy. He has failed that because he has promised big and delivered little.

If you look at the details in the Daily Telegraph and in other papers today, you will see what the promises have been and what has actually been delivered on the way through. This is only a first-term government. It will be judged on the back of what it promised to deliver for the Australian community and what it has in actual fact delivered. If you look at the boxes comparing promises to delivery, it is quite clear that this is a government that has completely and utterly lost control of the reform agenda.

If you look at the management of government by the Prime Minister, you will see a Prime Minister who is micromanaging his own government. It is no secret round this place, as you, Deputy Speaker Forshaw, and my colleagues well know, that one of the biggest complaints against the Prime Minister from his own colleagues—and his ministerial colleagues particularly—is that he micromanages this government. If something goes into that office, if you get it back out in five months you have done well; you are the teacher’s pet if you get something out of the Prime Minister’s office within five months of it being put in.

This has now stretched to the point of disbelief. This government is pushing a line that it is a reformist government that is taking action. It is quite clear to everyone that they indeed are not. If you look at the whole debate in relation to the ETS, you see a Prime Minister who knows that the public has turned against him. You see a Prime Minister who knows that he has lost this debate. You see a Prime Minister who went to Copenhagen on the back of an outcome that he said that he would be driving, because he was indeed a friend of the chair. Everyone knows that the member for Griffith went there expecting an outcome and came home with nothing. Everyone is acutely aware that the member for Griffith, who will be the subject of this redistribution in Queensland, has a noose round his neck called ‘Copenhagen’ and a noose round his neck in relation to action on climate.

What we saw this week from the new Leader of the Opposition was indeed a direct action plan that the community can understand and respond to. The difficulty that this government has is that its ETS is not a program that is understood by the community—except for one thing: the community now knows that they will be paying an enormous penalty for Mr Rudd’s self-indulgence in relation to action on climate change. They will be paying in excess of $1,000 per year extra because of his indulgence. The member for Griffith, who will be the subject of this redistribution, as indicated in document No. 65 on today’s Notice Paper, cannot explain to the Australian community why they should be paying the penalty of a very large tax.

Over the next two months, the Australian community will come to understand that there are two choices. One is a tax and one is a plan for action against climate change. I made it quite clear in this chamber before Christmas that there are response that are inappropriate and that there are real responses. (Time expired).

Question agreed to.