Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education and School Curriculum Standards) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How quickly we forget. I remember just three years ago Mr Rudd talked about the blame game and said he would ‘end the blame game’. But there is a new blame game in town and that is Mr Rudd blaming the Senate for all his failures. This goes all the way back to that searing global vision, that propensity to save the world, that the Prime Minister had just three years ago.

He blames the Senate for the failure of his government to put together the ‘pan-Asian union’—I think that is what it was called. It would be the Asian equivalent of the European Union. It failed, of course. Not one Asian country wanted to sign up to it. I read today that South Korea, our closest ally in Asia, also said no. Who will support this? No-one. Remember: this was Mr Rudd’s first grand idea. Nuclear disarmament was his next great idea to save the world. What happened with that? It failed as well. That is no doubt the Senate’s fault as well. He wanted to save the world from nuclear weapons—all the fault of the Senate—the great global vision. You might recall that then he wanted to save the poor old whales from the Japanese. Remember that? It was another part of the global vision. The poor old whales; I hope they did not trust Mr Rudd, because he failed on that as well. He had no impact on the Japanese and their whaling. Again, it was a part of this broad global vision—the pan-Asian union, stop whaling and then nuclear disarmament.

What is perhaps even more embarrassing is his article—which I have here in the chamber, although I do not even like touching it; my hands shake when I touch it—in the Monthly: ‘The global financial crisis’ by Kevin Rudd. In this article, Mr Rudd talks about wanting to ‘redesign’ the world’s economic architecture. This is another part of the global vision. Mr Rudd was going to redesign the international financial architecture. Of course, he could not do that, because the Senate got in his way. It was all the Senate’s fault. I noticed as I was rereading this—I put it near my bed and I read this article quite frequently—

Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Social Inclusion and the Voluntary Sector) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are a lonely, lonely man.

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education and School Curriculum Standards) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am a midnight Hansard reader, Senator Stephens.

Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You have 16 minutes left, Senator Mason.

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education and School Curriculum Standards) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the article, Mr Rudd says this:

Neither governments nor the peoples they represent any longer have confidence in an unregulated system of extreme capitalism. … Or, as China’s Vice Premier Wang Qishan reportedly said, somewhat more elliptically: “The teachers now have some problems.”

That is Mr Rudd quoting the Chinese. I wonder what the Chinese say about Mr Rudd and his global vision, now that the Chinese really know what Mr Rudd really thinks about them.

The next part of the great global structure—his attempts to save the world and redesign the globe—was to save the world through the emissions trading scheme, the CPRS. It was the fifth way he was going to save the world. It was the ‘greatest moral challenge of our time’. I do not have any problem believing in the sincerity of Mr Garrett, Senator Wong and others, but I never even for a second believed in the sincerity of Mr Rudd. All he wanted to use Copenhagen and the entire debate for was to (1) wedge the opposition and (2) when he was made ‘friend of the chair’ in Copenhagen, run around Copenhagen securing support for his UN bid and make a big man of himself. Now he has not got a friend in the world—literally, the world. That was the aim of the entire process. This unctuous, pathetic, insincere view that we had to have an ETS and it was worth everything. Not to do so was a cancer on democracy. It was the greatest moral issue of our time. He was going to redesign the globe and save the planet. And it collapsed in a heap. No-one in this chamber—Labor, Liberal or crossbenchers—believes anymore in Mr Rudd’s sincerity on that issue, or indeed on any others. It was an appalling moral failure on behalf of the Prime Minister. None of us on this side objects to the proposition that the CPRS is a policy that could potentially be pursued in the future. I do not mind the strongest arguments—as you well know, sir—but what I cannot stand is the political opportunism and the weak opportunism displayed by the Prime Minister on the issue. It has done him no end of harm.

With the Prime Minister it ended up like this: if you cannot have a pan-Asian union, if you cannot save the whales, if you cannot disarm the nuclear weapons, if you cannot restructure the world’s financial system, if you cannot have an ETS—if you cannot save the world—what do you do? You let the rest of the world in. Then border protection becomes an issue and immigration becomes an issue. We had 340,00 people in last year—that is about the size of Canberra—about 1,000 people a week. As soon as the population in this country decided that was a bad thing—and they did—he decided to set up a department of population. It was a pathetic performance. In border protection, my colleagues are far more eloquent than me. Suffice to say this: when the coalition left office, there was not a problem; when the Labor Party, the government, sent out the wrong signals, there was a problem. That is what the Australian public knows. He could not save the world so he thought he would just let it in.

The paradox of all this—and my friend Senator Abetz discussed this before in his contribution—is that while Mr Rudd was running around the world trying to save it he could not even monitor the price of two cauliflowers, one in Brisbane and one in Toowoomba. He could not even monitor the price of vegetables with GroceryWatch. That was a total and embarrassing failure. We then had Fuelwatch and he could not even do that properly; so who would have expected him to save the world? What is worse is that Fuelwatch and GroceryWatch were the two great propositions put forward by the Rudd government to support working families with cost-of-living pressures. You may recall that. They both failed dismally. Still, it was true to form for the government to totally fail in the decent implementation of policy.

What is worse than when Mr Rudd fails to keep his promises? What is worse than when he breaks his promises? I will tell you what is worse: it is when he keeps them. The pink batts fiasco—the batts from hell fiasco—has been one of the greatest shambles in federal history. What did it cost—about $2.3 billion? Now we have got hundreds of thousands of homes with potentially lethal material in their roofs. We have about one fire every day and we have had four deaths—and this was supposedly a successful policy because he kept his promise. It was an absolutely abject failure. I just wish he had broken his promise and not implemented it.

What about the $43 billion National Broadband Network? As my friends have said this week in their contributions, about 16 per cent are subscribing, it is costing $43 billion and there has not even been a business viability study on it. This is an absolute shambles. I wish that Mr Rudd would break his promise and scrap it because we as a nation would be better off. I understand that it is not even going to be finished until 2017, by which time I suppose Mr Rudd will be off at the UN and Senator Conroy will be playing football for Australia. Of course, all this is the Senate’s fault! All these grand failures are the Senate’s fault! All of our obstructionism is the problem! It is not Mr Rudd’s fault, it is not this disgusting and pathetic implementation; it is all the Senate’s fault!

You would know, Mr Acting Deputy President, that my particular area of interest is the Building the Education Revolution. That has been the greatest shambles since 1901. We have had $16 billion spent on this program. Who would think it was possible to spend $16 billion and make principals, teachers, students and even teacher unions unhappy? Mr Rudd has done the impossible: he has spent $16 billion and made all the stakeholders unhappy. That is a great gift. Why? We now know what the problems are. One problem is the notorious templates. My friend Senator Carr loves these templates because they have this whiff of central planning about them. Senator Carr loves the Brezhnev Russia sort of stuff. There has been enormous failure in the Building the Education Revolution program not only because of the templates but also because of the lack of flexibility. There is no flexibility in the process. School communities want to know how the money is to be spent and for what purpose it will be spent and they want control over it. All the indications to the Senate over the last few months have been: ‘If we have control over the money we can spend it properly.’ I do not care whether it is government schools, independent schools or Catholic schools, all people want is control over the money.

So what has happened? There has not been a complaint or concern expressed by virtually any Catholic or independent school in the country. These are thousands of schools. This is not just one, two or three but thousands of schools with no complaints. Do you know why? Because they have been able to spend the money on their own priorities and manage the projects. All of them have done it well, virtually without exception. But what happens when the money goes to state governments for state schools? What is the evidence there? I will tell you, Mr Acting Deputy President, what the evidence is. When money goes through state governments, state schools are paying too much. They are paying too much by one, two, three, four or five times what they should be paying. Why? Because the Commonwealth does not have the oversight mechanisms that it should have. This is a systemic problem. What is happening is that state governments are giving out huge contracts throughout the state and there are not sufficient oversight mechanisms to control the process. This is what is facing this nation over the next little while: with the so-called new federalism, the national partnerships, the Commonwealth government does not have the capacity to effectively oversight the expenditure of Commonwealth money by state instrumentalities. That is the problem in a sentence, according to the Auditor-General’s report and the evidence given recently in the estimates committees.

Mr Cahill was responsible for the report, Building the education revolution: primary schools for the 21st century. In estimates he said that the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace did not have sufficient oversight mechanisms to ensure that Commonwealth money spent by state instrumentalities secured value for money. The Commonwealth government cannot be sure that state governments are getting good value for money. That is not what I am saying; that is what the Auditor-General said in evidence. The Commonwealth parliament, including the Senate, votes money to the executive to spend on programs. This parliament cannot be certain that that money is securing value for money. That is the problem. We cannot be certain that state governments are getting value for money for the money they are spending on school projects in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. This is a huge problem. It has implications for every single thing the government is doing.

If you think it is bad in relation to education—and, sure, there are significant implications—what about the new health proposals? What about health reform? Education might have cost $16 billion over the last couple of years, but health will cost billions more—several multiples more. The Commonwealth government cannot be certain that state parliaments are spending the money well. Our Auditor-General gave evidence that he cannot follow the money trail into state instrumentalities; he does not have the power. State parliaments are supposed to be the responsible entity. How responsible are they? It is not in their interests to disclose the fact that they have failed. None of the state auditors-general, who do have the power, have taken up the challenge. Apparently it is left to state estimates processes. In Queensland, it is nine hours a year and the opposition gets half—4½ hours a year in estimates. These are the so-called responsible oversight mechanisms of the expenditure of $16 billion. It is outrageous.

Quite frankly, Mr Rudd can complain about the Senate, but my home state of Queensland has a unicameral system. He might be comfortable in the unicameral system, but the Australian people are a hell of a lot better off with a bicameral system. They are much, much better off. Imagine if this government had operated in a unicameral system.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A disaster.

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education and School Curriculum Standards) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Building the Education Revolution has been a disaster anyway, Senator Bernardi, but at least we now know it is a shambles. It never would have been uncovered if it were not for the Senate and for the Auditor-General, otherwise the government would have got away with it. It has been the greatest failure of implementation of public policy I can think of and it has cost this country billions and billions of dollars. It is all very well for Mr Rudd to go on about the Senate, that it is all the Senate’s fault, that the Senate have failed and that they have wasted time. I can honestly say that if it had not been for the Senate, this government would have done worse than it has.

I think there is great talent in the Australian Labor Party and there are many people who no doubt will make a significant contribution in the future.

Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Any here now?

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education and School Curriculum Standards) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Some here now, and a lot of good people in the House of Representatives who will make a big contribution. But I do not mind suggesting that I think the current Prime Minister is one of the least worthy since Federation. He has led a government very, very poorly. If it had not been for the Senate, he would not be held up to account. Mr Rudd’s problem is not with the Senate, it is with everyone.

Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to discuss the notice of motion of Senator Abetz. It reads:

That the Senate notes the Prime Minister’s continued unprincipled attacks upon the Senate.

In my view, the Prime Minister’s reference was primarily made concerning the importance of passing the Paid Parental Leave Bill 2010 before the winter break. We on this side of the chamber refute Senator Abetz’s comments about the Prime Minister’s so-called unprincipled attacks upon the Senate. Senator Abetz’s concerns about the Prime Minister’s comment to ‘get out of the way’ are selective and uncalled-for hype. At a press conference held on Tuesday, 15 June, the Prime Minister said:

Get out of the road, guys. Just get on with it.

He said merely that; nothing more intended. However, Senator Abetz’s motion purports to indicate something else. The Prime Minister went on to say:

This is really important, this is really important, it is so key to making life easier for working families.

What a true statement that is. It was so pleasing that the bill was passed by the Senate this afternoon.

If you read the Prime Minister’s comments fully and in context, the implication is not as Senator Abetz puts. I want to refer to some of his quotes, such as a story on Wednesday on the website Australia.to News in which Senator Abetz makes comments that are outrageous, inappropriate and untruthful. He said:

It now seems, according to Mr Rudd that the Senate should not only be a rubber stamp, it should not exist at all!

Mr Rudd is known to channel Mr Whitlam, now it seems he’s reviving Labor’s Whitlam-era position that the Senate should be abolished.

Not once did the Prime Minister make such comments. However, Leader of the Opposition and the opposition in this place have indicated that those comments were made by the Prime Minister. No doubt Senator Abetz’s quote is a blatant lie. It has to be somewhere close to the ‘gospel truth’ that his leader, Tony Abbott, relies upon—no surprise there. Rather, the Prime Minister’s emphasis was on passing the paid parental leave legislation, which will give working mothers the opportunity to stay at home longer and the incentive to return to the workforce.

As a senator on the Community Affairs Legislation Committee and a member of the paid parental leave inquiry, I understand the importance and the urgency of passing this important piece of legislation. I am proud, as someone who was part of the inquiry by that committee, to see it passed this afternoon. This legislation will give Australian families more options to balance work and family by allowing the primary carer, usually the mother, to transfer any unused parental leave pay to their partner, provided they are also eligible.

The Prime Minister was not the only one hoping for this bill to be passed swiftly. In the same press conference, the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, said:

I do also want to say to all of the Senators, now’s the time, now’s the time to vote for this legislation to make sure that it will be available for parents from the first of January next year. For the first time, Australia will catch up with the rest of the world.

We are catching up with the rest of the world. That is what the introduction of this legislation and the success of it today is all about—to bring us up to a standard that the rest of the world is at. She went on to say:

Eighteen weeks paid at the federal minimum wage, paid for by the Government, paid for and budgeted for, we know that this is something that parents have waited a very, very long time for.

At the same press conference, the Prime Minister made reference to the welfare reform bill, which is another piece of legislation we are hoping to have passed by this chamber before we rise for the winter break. Senator Abetz states that the Prime Minister’s remarks are unprincipled. In an interview posted on the Australia.to News website the senator said:

Yesterday Mr Rudd staged a baby-kissing event to call on the Senate to “get out of the way” on paid parental leave.

That was never the intention of the Prime Minister of this country. I take this opportunity now to thank Senator Abetz for moving this motion today, in particular drawing attention to their ineptness and their failings. I have only been here for a short time, not quite two years, but I wonder at times—and it has been mentioned in the chamber today—that the media, the opposition and a combination of people out there in the community blame the government of the day rather than looking at the progress of things in this chamber with an understanding of how this chamber actually works and the opposition we have had to some of the things that we have not got through.

I reflect back on the government’s proposal for a fuelwatch scheme. It was in fact the first inquiry I was on and I distinctly recall, in Perth, Senator Abetz being criticised by the media over there for his opposition to Fuelwatch. Bearing in mind he is from Tasmania, the media portrayed him as being in opposition to it and said therefore he should not have an opinion on it. But that is part of the process of the Senate and the inquiries we are involved in. We scrutinised the legislation and the outcome was not as a result of the good work that the senators did on that inquiry—mainly the senators from this side of the chamber—but came down to the numbers in this chamber. We purely did not have the numbers to pass that legislation, which in my opinion was good legislation with good proposals for the benefit of people in this nation.

I turn my focus to another example of bills that have been rejected in this chamber: the CPRS legislation. I was fortunate enough to be a member of the CPRS and climate change inquiries, which took us to all parts of the country, listening to evidence from communities in the regions and the capitals, and when we handed down the inquiry’s report—and no doubt there was a dissenting report—those opposite opposed it. Following that, there was an opportunity where we felt as a government we were getting close, with the opposition, to making sure that we would get the legislation through. An agreement was drafted with the opposition—and, if you recall, the leader at that stage was none other than Malcolm Turnbull. A deal was done, and what happened was that the rug was pulled from under our feet. The opposition reneged on that deal. With my background and experience, I would call it not bargaining in good faith. Not only did they renege on the deal but also they changed their leadership. It was a shame, in my view, to see that happen but nevertheless that is their issue and that is what they have to bear.

Just to digress slightly, today I was given a document entitled ‘Have your say on climate change’. It appears to be referring to some survey that the opposition is putting out, in particular in my state of Queensland. In the document there is a disgraced and disendorsed Liberal-National Party candidate for the seat of Wright, Hajnal Ban, but in the photograph on the survey there is also a senator from this chamber and the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott. It surprises me that this sort of documentation is going out now when the opposition know full well they opposed climate change and they remain sceptical. They are not prepared even to consider putting forward any proposal to combat our greatest concerns about our climate.

Once again, the government gets the blame for not getting changes through the Senate. Another example is the Australian Building Construction Commission. We put through legislation that was fair and reasonable and, once again, the opposition, along with Senator Fielding, opposed it. They want to make sure they hang on to those shackles of Work Choices, hang on to their history, hang on to a past where they have issues with workers. They should be reminded that they were thrown out of government as a result of Work Choices. They will continue down that path in the lead-up to the election, as the opposition leader did in his response to the budget. They will once again introduce this type of legislation, not titled Work Choices of course but no doubt with the same structure and the same issues that will affect people in our workplaces.

Just yesterday there was another prime example of the obstruction in this chamber. A motion was put forward by the government to extend the hours of the Senate—and this was a type of motion that, if you look back in time, has been suggested on numerous occasions—and once again it was rejected by the opposition with the assistance of Senator Fielding. So, when it comes down to obstruction, the opposition is not fair dinkum.

Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for debate having expired, the Senate will proceed to the consideration of government documents.