Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I rise to speak on the report of the Finance and Public Administration References Committee Government advertising and accountability and the government response to that report. I think most Australians are thoroughly sick of the waste of their taxpayers' money on political party advertising that they are seeing on their television screens at the present time. Clearly, a year ago the Prime Minister, along with every other political party leader apart from Senator Brown, promised there would be no carbon tax. On the basis of that promise by Ms Gillard just a year ago, a lot of people voted for the Australian Labor Party at the election. They voted knowing with confidence that whether Labor or Liberal was elected as the government there would be no carbon tax and that as Australians they would not be subjected to the cost-of-living increases that would obviously follow from the imposition of a carbon tax on our costs of production—on our electricity, on our fuel and on our gas supply.

It was on that basis that the government of Australia was formed. Since that time the Labor Party has changed its policy completely and is in the throes of debating in the other place and in the Senate next week a suite of bills—19 bills—that will impose upon Australians the greatest cost-of-living increase of recent times. Because of this legislation, based on a lie, this new tax will be imposed upon all Australians. If that is not bad enough for all Australians, they are absolutely devastated and very angry that they have been lied to. Whether or not they were on one side of the debate on carbon emissions or on the other side—for many people it does not make a great deal of difference—by a clear margin a majority of Australians are simply annoyed and angry that they have been lied to by the person holding the top position in our country. Not only has Ms Gillard, irreparably for herself, shown that she cannot be trusted, that her word cannot be taken, but she has demeaned the office of Prime Minister to the extent that Australians now doubt the word of our leader.

That is a shame for Australia, and people are very angry. I know that Labor Party people find, as we do, as we move around the country, that overwhelming sense of anger and frustration in the general public. The general public are just waiting for their chance to have their say on a Prime Minister who cannot keep her word. You will find a lot of promises and very fine words, very fine phrases, from Ms Gillard over the next period of time for as long as she remains Prime Minister. Australians will always hear everything she says but very few of them will believe her. They will remember forever that this is a Prime Minister who promised something, not once but on several occasions, then got herself elected and did the exact opposite. I say Australians are angry and frustrated at that breach of promise and at this legislation based on a lie, but what they are even more angry about now is seeing taxpayers' money being spent on advertising this tax based on a lie.

The advertising that is coming across is clearly political advertising to support the interests of the Australian Labor Party and the Greens political party. There is no other way that that advertising can be described. The Labor Party and the Greens political party know that their future as political parties depends upon this particular piece of policy based on a lie being implemented. They are spending millions and millions of taxpayers' dollars trying to convince the people of Australia that this is a good policy. If Ms Gillard thought this was a good policy, why didn't she run with this policy before the last election? Why did she in fact promise the exact opposite policy? She knew it was wrong then. She knew that it would cost Australians dearly with cost-of-living increases. She knew that electricity prices would go up by anywhere from 10 per cent to 20 per cent—and recent assessments by various state governments have shown that electricity prices are set to skyrocket with the introduction of Ms Gillard's carbon tax.

In attempting to gain public support for this policy, this legislation based on a lie, Ms Gillard is now spending millions and millions of taxpayers' dollars on an advertising campaign trying to convince the public that this policy is a good policy, trying to convince the public that they should support her and her government on this policy, when she was not game to put this policy forward just 12 months ago. If she was not prepared to use Labor Party money a year ago to advertise and try to get support for this policy, if she knew that no-one would vote for her if they implemented this policy, she is now using not Labor Party money but taxpayers' money, revenue from the Treasury, to advertise what is clearly a political party advertising campaign. This is despicable.

I have not had time to look up what the Labor Party used to say about this in days gone by. I have not had time to look up all of the pious, principled words that we all expect from the Greens political party—words that we know are just dripping with hypocrisy. But I can assure you, Mr Acting Deputy President, having sat in this chamber, I have heard the Greens political party and the Labor Party carry on ad infinitum about the use of taxpayers' money. I see Senator Cameron has come into the chamber. I hope he is going to take part in this debate, because I would like him to first of all justify why we should be having legislation based on a lie. But I would be more interested to hear from Senator Cameron just what the justification is for spending taxpayers' money, hard-earned money, on a political advertising campaign for something the Labor Party was not prepared to pay their own money to advertise just 12 months ago.

The government—the Labor Party, the Greens political party—stand condemned. Where are the Greens political party when these highly principled issues are raised? In days gone by, when it was the Howard government in charge, they would be in here—you could never shut them up. These days, because they are in this close alliance—in fact, more than a close alliance; they are directing the Australian Labor Party in the way of this policy, this legislation based on a lie—they are totally silent. I just wonder where all of their principles, all of their hifalutin words about taxpayer funded advertising have gone. When they are part of it, as these reports that we are discussing today clearly show, then it is essential that they be called to account. But of course they are missing in action. The hypocrisy of the Greens political party knows no bounds. I only have five minutes in which to talk on this matter at this time, but certainly this idea of using taxpayers' money for blatant political advertising to save the skin of the current Prime Minister is just atrocious and needs to be condemned. (Time expired)

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would also like to speak to the Finance and Public Administration Refer­ences Committee report Government advertising and accountability. I couldn't help myself. While I was in my office I heard Senator Macdonald use the 'H' word: hypocrisy. I thought to myself, 'What is this? Senator Macdonald talking about hypocrisy on government advertising.' My mind went back to Work Choices, when Senator Macdonald sat in here and voted time and time again to rip the conditions of Australian workers away. Not only did he vote for that but he was complicit in the coalition's position of spending $150 million of taxpayers' money to advertise Work Choices. Remember the ads—all those happy workers that loved Work Choices; all those happy little workers out there saying, 'We love Work Choices!' When they got a chance to vote on Work Choices they kicked you lot out, because the hypocrisy—

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So let's have an election on carbon tax!

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

Order! Senator Cameron, resume your seat. Opposition senators on my left, your last speaker was heard in complete silence. I expect you to reciprocate the same consideration given to government senators.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I really cannot believe Senator Macdonald's gall in standing up here and saying that it is wrong for a government to educate the public about the dangers of climate change, about a policy that ensures that we have got a decent environment in this country and about a policy that ensures that future generations have the same rights as we have to enjoy a decent environment. And what does Senator Macdonald do? Senator Macdonald talks about hypocrisy. The biggest hypocrisy is when Senator Abetz, the leader of the coalition in this house, was in charge of the biggest use of public funds to promote a policy that was never taken to the electorate before it was brought in, and that policy was Work Choices—$150 million spent on a policy that was never mentioned before the election.

We know they say, 'Don't talk about Work Choices,' and why would they talk about it? They spent $150 million of public money to rip the shift loadings off ordinary workers, to take annual leave from ordinary workers, to take penalty rates off ordinary workers, to take away their public holidays and to give the boss absolute control over workers' lives when they are at work. They spent $150 million of public money trying to promote a policy that was about trying to devastate the working conditions of Australian workers, and they have the hide to come in here and argue that we should not advertise our legislation, which is about supporting the rights of workers in this country to continue to enjoy a decent environment. That is what they are in here doing. Audit Office reports said that the coalition did not even have signed contracts to deliver their advertising before they put it in place. They did not even do that. That is why the Audit Office put out recommendations about how you should deal with this—because of the incompetence and the skulduggery of the coalition spending $150 million of public money to attack the workers of this country. The workers will not forget that.

We know that the battle is on again in the Liberal Party to reintroduce Work Choices. The member for Moncrieff, Mr Ciobo, has had a battle and a brawl with Senator Abetz because Mr Ciobo wants to go out and promote Work Choices and Senator Abetz wants to hide the fact that Work Choices is coming back. That is the position of the coalition in this chamber. They want to hide the fact that Work Choices is coming back, and Work Choices will be back under an Abbott government.

The coalition were appealing to the worst elements in industry to say, 'We want to rip away workers' rights.' They were out saying, 'We want industry to tell us what the problem is.' So the usual suspects, the former Liberal Party minders who were heading up employer organisations, delivered. They said: 'We think we need more flexibility. We think you should change the industrial system in this country.' And what do they do? The hawks, the right-wing extremists in the coalition, are out there saying, 'We want Work Choices back,' and they have the hide to argue about us spending money to educate the public about good public policy. They spent $150 million on the worst public policy that has ever been introduced, a public policy that attacked families in this country. It attacked ordinary workers and left them at the mercy of some of the worst bosses in this country, and that is what they want to go back to. I suppose if they ever do come back to government and they do reintroduce Work Choices they will be spending more public money. They spent $150 million the last time they did it, and they will be looking to spend more public money to try to justify ripping the penalty rates, the shift loadings and the annual leave loadings off ordinary Australians, because that is what they are about. The opposition are not about a sophisticated approach on productivity. They would not know how to spell productivity. They were economic incompetents when they were in government. We had amongst the lowest productivity in the world. We were amongst the lowest in the OECD for research and development and innovation. They failed to deal with climate change. They were an absolute failure and their jelly-backed leader in the Treasury, who wanted to be the leader of the party—the jelly-backed Peter Costello—could not even stand up and say he wanted to be the leader. That is because he was too scared to actually deal with the economy in a really effective way. He was a failure as a politician, he was a failure as a Treasurer, and these people are sitting across there trying to lecture us about economic credibility.

They had no credibility. History will prove that Peter Costello was one of the worst Treasurers in this country—a jelly-back, a weak man with no economic competence. He did not even have the guts to take John Howard on. He was going to be their leader. Their leader was going to be a jelly-back. Then they have the hide to come in here and say to the government, 'Tut tut, you are spending money on advertising to help the future of this nation.'

What did Peter Costello say about the $150 million waste of public money spent under his watch as he spruiked Work Choices? Absolutely nothing, because he was one of the extremists in the Liberal Party. He couldn't hang around. He didn't have the guts to hang around and challenge. He didn't have the guts to stay as the Leader of the Opposition. He did not have the capacity. And now they have Tony Abbott there who wants to rip away workers' wages and conditions. He wants to rip away the rights of workers on the job. That is what you are about and the public will not forget it. Work Choices is coming back. We all know it and we know who is going to bring it in. It is the coalition. Their hypocrisy just stinks.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I feel compelled to make at least a brief contribution. While Senator Cameron was making his contribution, at one stage I actually thought—with my capacity to be able to translate what he was saying—he said Peter Costello was a poor Treasurer. I thought he actually said he was an incompetent Treasurer.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. Trying to attack me because of my accent and my Scottish heritage is unparliamentary and should be withdrawn.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If Senator Cameron's Scottish heritage in some way is an embarrassment to him, I would obviously withdraw, except to draw the comparison with both him and Senator Macdonald being of Scottish heritage. I do withdraw, Mr Acting Deputy President.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, I rise on a point of order. Wearing a tartan tie in the Senate does not mean you are of Scottish heritage.

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

There is no point of order.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It must have been my mistake not to have heard Senator Cameron clearly and carefully when he said that Mr Costello was a bad Treasurer. This was the Treasurer, as I recall, who actually repaid ninety-six thousand million dollars of Labor debt from the last Keating government. It was in fact a cost of some $6 billion per annum of interest that was able to go straight back into the Australian economy, into what is called the bottom line. And of course that is what drove the Australian economy in the years of the Howard-Costello government.

In fact, if I recall correctly, I think when Labor came into government there was something like $25 billion sitting in a cash account. There was no debt and there clearly was no deficit. If there are two reasons that this incompetent Labor government ever got through the global financial crisis, they were the legacy of the Howard-Costello govern­ment and of course the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Mr Stevens, who was able to undo all of the damage that Treasurer Swan was endeavouring to wreak upon this country.

As I look at this report, it says 'government advertising and accountability'. Needless to say, it is an oxymoron when you use the terms 'government' and 'account­ability' with this current government. Let me explain why. I think the first committee in which I participated when I came into this place was on the Gillard memorial halls, variously referred to as the Building the Education Revolution.

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

Order! Senator Back, you will refer to the Prime Minister by her correct title.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will indeed and I thank you for correcting me: the Ms Gillard memorial halls, or what was formally known as the Building the Education Revolution. It was because of my previous membership of the Catholic Education Commission of Western Australia for some nine years that I saw, at the first meeting we had, in Melbourne, with Senator Cash sitting beside me, as I recall, the scandalous difference between the management of those funds by the different school sectors—the Catholic and independent school sectors as opposed to the state school sector.

We know that it had nothing to do with stimulating any building activity in Victoria, because by the time moneys were spent in Victoria the global economic crisis had in fact passed us. We also know that in three states alone—Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland—if you compare or contrast the expenditure on exactly the same buildings, of the same per square metre costs, the state governments in those three instances wasted somewhere between three and five thousand million dollars on the state school constructions as contrasted with those of the Catholic and the independent schools. It would have been far better to have given the management of the whole project to the Catholic and independent school sectors. The expenditure of moneys would have been much more effective, putting to one side that there was very limited educational benefit to building school halls. Most of us—it is true in my particular case and, I am sure, for others—came from very small country schools where there were 50 to 60 kids in a class. There were no halls, there were no gymnasia and there were none of these other things, and yet we all seemed to perform. The absolutely essential matter associated with educational excellence is excellence of teachers and teaching, and the stimulation and encouragement of teachers—none of which the BER program addressed.

The second matter I draw attention to in regard to so-called government account­ability—excuse my mirth; I was overcome for a moment—is the pink batts program, where we not only wasted $2 billion or $3 billion but regrettably had deaths. We also have ongoing costs—'we' being the Australian taxpayers. Not Treasury, not the government but the taxpayers of Australia have ongoing costs, trying to undo the absolute brilliance of pink batts.

I had the pleasure of travelling recently with Mr Costello on a plane from Melbourne to Perth. If I may use his Christian name in this context, I said to him, 'Peter, are you over it yet?' He said, 'Chris, I am most of the time, but when I see the squandering and the waste, when I see what was a surplus go to nothing, and when I see a debt go to $50 billion'—and, as my colleague Senator Cash said earlier today, that $50 billion went to $200 billion and now to $250 billion and even higher—'that really upsets me.' 'But do you know something?' he said. 'When I was the Treasurer they walked the pink batts in to me. They put it in front of me and said, "This would be a great idea, Treasurer." It took me about three nanoseconds to see through it, to see the stupidity of it, and I told them to shred it.' Of course, they did not shred it, did they? They just put it in the bottom drawer and waited for the Labor Party to come into government, at which time they extricated it again. All it did in the efforts to deliver it was to prove what Peter Costello had predicted would happen. It obviously did.

The matter that I really want to draw to the chamber's attention in this context of government accountability is the NBN, the National Broadband Network. I remember, when speaking to that matter, asking Senator Conroy what the business plan was. He smirked in his usual fashion—I did not know him all that well then—and he said, 'We don't need a business plan, Senator Back.' I said to him across the chamber, 'Well, what about a cost-benefit analysis?' Having spent the last 30 years of my life running either my own businesses or government departments, I know that business plans and cost-benefit analyses really are quite useful, particularly when you have to be accountable to yourself, to directors or indeed to parliament. I remember giving a speech on the matter and I actually went through the notion of what a business plan for the NBN might look like, in the vain hope, I now know, that he might take some notice. Had he taken some notice, he would not now be in the position he is.

Only last week I was in the three wheat belt towns in Western Australia of Quairading, Bruce Rock and Narembeen. People told me that the simple fact is they are going to lose what is a relatively slow program at the moment called ADSL. They are going to lose it under this new brilliance of NBN and it is going to be replaced by satellite services, which are slower than ADSL. So in fact their service is going down. The interesting thing about all that is what my host, Stephen Strange, pointed out to me. He said, 'The fibre-optic cable goes through my north-west paddock and yet we are losing ADSL to get an even more inferior service.' I pointed this out in this chamber one day only to be derided by my Western Australian Labor colleague Senator Bishop. I pointed out that no towns with fewer than 1,000 occupants would be getting the service about which we were speaking. In fact, so stupid were Senator Bishop's comments to me that he was called upon to withdraw them. Bruce Rock, Quairading and Narembeen are only three examples of what I was just speaking about.

Only today did I meet with grocery retailers and they were telling me that they are suffering terribly now because of EFTPOS. Some 70 per cent of sales in small country towns are on EFTPOS, and retail is the area that the government were telling us today they know all about. Older people use EFTPOS for banking purposes, but now EFTPOS is going to need access to some sort of broadband. They are not going to see it. Services are going down, and all we see is further deterioration. These are just a few examples. We could go on. There was the renewable energy nonsense under various ministers. We could talk about cash for clunkers. If only time permitted I would speak to the chamber about some of the activities that occurred as a result of the overnight suspension of the live export trade. I would love to talk about government accountability, but not in this place with this government. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.