Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research (Senator Evans) and the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (Senator Conroy) to questions without notice asked by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (Senator Abetz) and Senators Brandis and Birmingham today relating to the Labor Government and the National Broadband Network.

I noted three truths as I was going around the streets last night to grab a meal. One was that Prime Minister Gillard would win the vote today quite convincingly, and she did. The second was that Mr Rudd would get around 30 votes, and he did. The third was that Mr Shorten is currently planning to have another pitch at the leadership within six months, which he will. These things are absolutely obvious.

Whilst I was away during the floods, people were asking me who was pairing me. Apparently it was Dougie Cameron. He was doing a great job bringing down the government. He was hard at work with some other people. Obviously a whole range of them are out there basically tearing themselves apart. The problem with that, of course, is that our government has been cut loose. Our government is on autopilot. The metaphor that kept going through my head whilst I watched this fiasco, this disgrace—which in former times was supposed to be called a government—was what it would be like to go into an accountancy practice to find one partner screaming at the other partner, kicking over the photocopier, throwing cups of coffee and hurling the staplers around the office. And the other partner would be decrying them and absolutely pulling the rug out from under them—saying quite clearly that the partner was incompetent, that they obviously struggled, that they had no method, purpose or discipline and that they were chaotic. And then both of them would look at me and say: 'But we want your business.'

It is a remarkable thing to look back and find that Mr Swan has said that Mr Rudd was 'dysfunctional in his decision making' and that he was 'deeply demeaning in his attitudes towards other people'—obviously the perfect candidate for the Minister for Foreign Affairs. That is what we want: we want to take that chaos to a global scale. That is the decision that an obviously competent government makes. And then I ask the question: wasn't this the government that saw us through the GFC? Wasn't it the steady hand of Rudd at the tiller that got us through the GFC? Surely it cannot have been just the Chinese demand for our resources that got us through the GFC. No, it was Mr Rudd and ceiling insulation; it is so obvious, it is so clear. That is what got us through. The trouble is, of course: they are still there. I look at them today and there is Senator Cameron and Senator Conroy. I could not have done a better job myself than Senator Cameron did on live television this morning. It is beyond belief that this totally dysfunctional outfit is running our country. It is a disgrace—and that is the word I picked up on the street—what they are doing to our country. They are hopeless.

Whilst they have been using Australia as a plaything like a ball of string, our gross debt has gone beyond $229 billion. We borrowed an extra $2.3 billion just last week. The week before we borrowed $3.3 billion. The week before that we borrowed in excess of $2 billion. Our limit is $250 billion. You promised you would never get near it and you are racing towards it. Whilst this fiasco is happening in the foreground, something very serious is happening in the background. Who do we believe these days? Who do we honestly believe? The question has to be asked whether there was a lack of truth about the position of the government and the key officeholders in the past. Was that not the truth or is it not the truth now? The two stories are completely and utterly incongruous.

For Kevin to say that the bickering and destabilisation must stop, there is a good idea; that is a great idea. It started way back in the last election and has been going on ever since. Were they not the people who got rid of him? Was he not the elected Prime Minister, Mr Emerson? What was that, Mr Emerson? Was that just helping him out a bit? This destabilisation is endemic. Once the ingredients are in the Mixmaster, once the political intrigue is afoot, you can never get the ingredients back into the packet. (Time expired)

Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be taking note of the answers given to questions asked about the Gillard government because it gives me a great opportunity to put to bed this nonsense that we have been hearing from the opposition. Regardless of all the confection and outrage that we have been hearing over the last few days, we happen to be one of the strongest economies in the world, which is a credit to the work of the Labor government since being elected in 2007. All of the nonsense that goes on about whether it is a Rudd government or a Whitlam government—a Freudian slip—or a Gillard government plays out in the media very effectively, while the people who are depending on us to run a good government, a strong government and a strong economy are working men and women, the decent people of Australia, sitting there waiting to be reassured they are going to be looked after. We are the government that has done that so effectively.

The Australian economy has been the clear standout in the world since the GFC. We still have the lowest unemployment rate: 5.1 per cent, compared to 8.3 per cent in the US and more than 10 per cent in Europe. The tragedy of those stories we saw roll out across Europe in Spain, Germany, Portugal and Italy, particularly about youth unemployment, was the challenge that we recognised here in Australia during the GFC. We had the challenge of keeping young people at school or earning. We made the investment to ensure that we did not have a lost generation of young people, as that was the fundamental challenge that confronted us in the global financial crisis. Since the GFC, our economy in Australia has grown by more than seven per cent. Minister Arbib said today that we have a rating of AAA from all the rating agencies, something the Liberal government was never able to achieve and cannot admit is the successful hallmark of the government.

As we heard today in question time, more than 46,000 jobs were created in January alone. We increased our employment rate and maintained our unemployment rate of 5.1 per cent, thereby showing that the investment pipeline is strong for Australia. Our economy is intact. We had a $913 billion investment pipeline in the December quarter. Business confidence is strong and growing. Consumer confidence is growing. All we hear from this opposition is nay saying. All they do is take every opportunity to talk down the economy in ways that give people a great sense of fear and anxiety about their future.

What have we heard from the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Mr Stevens, and the people who make decisions for all of us in our economy recently? They say our rate of employment is sound, we have strong economic fundamentals and we need to invest in the infrastructure that is going to underpin our future. What is that infra­structure? We need critical investment in our transport infrastructure, in our ports and mining infrastructure and in our NBN infrastructure, which are going to make sure that we have a vibrant, strong economy.

The idea that we have to sit day after day and listen to Tony Abbott and the opposition with no policies, no vision for Australia, and no strategy for the future is what is driving people demented. The leadership discussion is over and done with. The leadership issue is finished today. Let us not forget that Mr Abbott won his leadership challenge by one vote, so 49 per cent of his colleagues did not support him in his leadership battle. Let us not worry now—

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Nobody is challenging now.

Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'Nobody is challenging now,' says Senator Abetz. Let us just see what is happening with Mr Turnbull and his team. A minority government requires hard work. Mr Abbott could not deliver minority government for the opposition and they are living with the consequences. He said he will not do deals. He cannot.

David Bushby (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of ministers' answers as mentioned by Senator Joyce. It was great to hear Senator Stephens today trying to defend the Australian government's record, particularly as it relates to the economy. I did not hear anywhere amongst that contribution references to the great job that Peter Costello and the previous Howard government did in handing over a government that had over $70 billion in the bank and which has now been turned into a situation where we are looking at a gross position of over $200 billion in the red and getting worse every day by about $100 million.

I also did not hear her explain why she voted for Mr Rudd this morning. Does she agree with her colleagues who have made a number of statements about the government? I would like to look at a couple of them. The Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson, said that Mr Rudd can win an election against opposition leader Tony Abbott and that Ms Gillard cannot. He said that he was:

… supporting him to try and save the Labor Party from itself. It's about trying to work out how we can best position our party to remain in government.

Similarly, Mr Rudd himself said:

If Julia is returned or if I'm elected, then I think it's time for various of the faceless men to lay down the cudgels.

Does Senator Stephens, who was supporting Mr Rudd, agree with these statements? Does she still agree with those perspectives? Does she think it is time for the faceless men to lay down the cudgels? I would have been very interested in hearing that. Has she maybe changed her mind the last couple of hours?

Senator Stephens also talked about the coalition nay-saying. Can I say that over the last week I have never heard so much negativity and nay-saying in politics. Today we had confirmation that almost one-third of the Labor caucus—and that includes Senator Stephens—does not have confidence in the Prime Minister. If you went out and polled Labor supporters around the country, you would probably find that even more than one-third of those Labor supporters would not have confidence in the Prime Minister. Today is the end of the most extraordinary five days in Australian politics, certainly in recent years. It was the peak so far of tensions and divisions that have been building in the Labor Party for months and have at their core the ruthless and efficient removal of then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his replacement with the current Prime Minister in June 2010.

As interesting as of all of this theatre is, the great tragedy is that the current government—a government that was put in place with the complicity of rural Independents, particularly and specifically because they thought it would be more stable and more long lived than the coalition alternative—finds its own issues, its own problems, its own internal divisions and its own electoral standing to be more engaging and important to it than the challenges that the nation currently faces. There are real challenges out there, including challenges for small businesses that are trying to make a dollar, trying to employ people and trying to pay them so that they can pay their mortgages. It comes back to the cost of living pressures that Australians are currently facing. But is the government interested in this? No, it is far more interested in spending all its time worrying about its own internal problems—worrying about personality issues and egos within the Labor Party and worrying about who is going to run the party—than worrying about what impact that will have on the needs and the challenges being faced by the Australian people.

Labor say that all of this internal division and infighting has not impacted on the government.

Senator Polley interjecting—

I hear Senator Polley making interjections along those lines. They say, 'Look at all the legislation that we have passed since we came in,' and they point to all these new acts that have passed. Most of that legislation was non-controversial. It was passed with the full support of the coalition and it is legislation that we would have put up if we had been in government and which would have been supported by Labor. The vast majority of it passed without any issue. There were bits and pieces here and there, but on the whole it would have been very similar if we had been in government. Those that have not been non-controversial or have not gone through with bipartisan support are largely bills that were passed as a result of dirty deals that were done with the Independents and the Greens to get government.

Two of those in particular were bills which were passed despite specific promises before the 2007 and 2010 elections that they would not be. Of course, I am talking about the carbon tax, about which the current Prime Minister—even after this morning—went to the last election, hand on heart, saying, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' Yet she introduced one. Now they are going around saying it is one of their main achievements. Similarly, there was the slashing of the private health rebate. Before the 2007 election they said, 'We will not touch it; we won't do a thing'. Now they have. They have broken another promise, and they say that is another one of their great achievements. (Time expired)

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very proud of this government's record, both under Kevin Rudd and under Prime Minister Julia Gillard. We have much to be proud of, and Senator Joyce should not be lecturing us on stability, given his track record. A government is not a popularity contest. It is about making the right decisions in government for the national interest and for the Australian people, and that is something that this Labor government consistently does. We are a government that have been able to make the hard decisions—decisions in the national interest, in the interests of Australian families and in the interests of Australian jobs. We have a strong and functioning government. We have the many hundreds of bills that have been passed—major reforms that have passed the House of Representatives and indeed this chamber. We have a strong and effective government, a government that is getting on with governing and that has wheels that have kept turning.

We also have plans for the future. We have a strong Prime Minister. We have a committed and tough PM, and we have a big agenda. No. 1 at the top of our agenda, our top priority, is managing our economy. It is about giving working people a fair share of our nation's mineral resources. It is about getting our nation ready for the future—for the new economy that we know is emerging. They are difficult decisions because they are difficult things to balance, but we are managing the economy for working people and for jobs—just as we did during the global financial crisis under Kevin Rudd. Now, as you can also clearly see, we are doing it in the manufacturing and auto industries, unlike those opposite. We as a government will maintain our disciplined fiscal strategy. It is about delivering a budget surplus in 2012-13, and those opposite have no plan for the future in this regard. They have a $70 billion black hole, and they cannot deliver a budget surplus for this nation. Labor, on the other hand, is able to build on the fact that, for the first time in Australia's history, we have joined an elite group of countries which hold a AAA credit rating from all three global rating agencies. These are important things for our national interest.

The cost of living for Australian families is something that I and others on this side of this chamber are resolutely focused on. It is a key issue for Australian families, and we are delivering the policies that underpin—

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Giving them a carbon tax—that'll help!

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A carbon tax? What would those opposite have us do?

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Remove it.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They might have us remove a carbon tax, but at what cost?

Opposition senators interjecting—

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order on my left!

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the cost of the tax cuts that Australians deserve, at the cost of the fairness that we want to deliver in the tax system to Australian families, at the cost of Australians with a disability, who deserve that disability insurance scheme, at the cost of our health and hospital system, at the cost of acting on climate change and at the cost of our education system—all things that we have done in the national interest.

What would those opposite have done during the global financial crisis? Would they have just cut spending? There are terribly contradictory things out there in relation to their agenda. Would they have supported schools around the nation to create jobs? I think that was an incredibly smart thing to do. What we saw during Building the Education Revolution was projects of a scale that meant we could roll them out and create jobs quickly. Had we invested it in large infrastructure, we would not have been able to roll out and create those jobs as quickly. But what we have seen is 9,000 schools around the country benefiting from what was an economic calamity, and we created hundreds of thousands of jobs around the country. This government is committed to infrastructure in public transport, unlike those opposite. (Time expired)

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

If anybody did not believe the dysfunctionality of this Labor government, they need only have listened to the answers to questions this afternoon by Senators Evans and Conroy and the interjections of Senator Wong. We have seen an admission of the dysfunctionality of this government, and you can just start with Senator Evans himself and others in the field of employment. They omit to mention that in the year 2011 employment flatlined in this country; there was not any increase. They very proudly talk about a minuscule increase in employment in the first month of 2012. That is January; that is the month when everybody leaving school is seeking work. Of course, they also omit to mention—although both Senator Evans and Senator Pratt are Western Australian senators—that all of that increase came from the state of Western Australia. They conveniently overlook what was happening in south-east Australia in manufacturing and in the car industry. Unemployment figures in this country are a disgrace to this government. If you look at underemployment and at those who are not participating, those who are not seeking work and those who have been reduced to part-time employment, you get the actual figures in employment participation.

We look at the question of debt. The Labor government, only four years ago, inherited a surplus of some $70 billion, no net debt and no deficit. In that space of time they have increased the indebtedness of this country to $230 billion. The taxpayers of this country need to understand that, even if that figure stops now, we will be paying back $15.4 billion a month in principal and interest for the next 20 years—$15.4 billion a month. This crowd on the other side have some gall to talk to us about fiscal responsibility. Surplus? They would not know what a surplus was. In 2007 they inherited a very sound economic situation. They ask us to compare America and Europe now to how Australia is now. Ask them how America, Europe and other parts of the world were in 2007.

Now we see the imposition of both carbon and mining taxes. Senator Pratt spoke of the car industry. Did she mention that last year, 2011—a record year for sales of cars in this nation—we actually manufactured less than 20 per cent of all cars sold, 200,000 out of one million? We manufactured fewer cars last year than we did in 1957. And what is the carbon tax going to do? It is going to add a cost $400 per car. So, if we manufacture 200,000 cars, there will be an $80 million increase in cost. But what about the 800,000 cars that will come in from overseas that will not be the subject of a $400 carbon tax impost? And we see that it goes on. There is a lack of business confidence in this country. If people want to start talking about confidence in manufacturing, in retailing and in the tourism sector, they need only pick up the newspapers once we can get this terrible government off the front page.

In the long, sad and lamentable litany of lies that we have seen out of the Labor mouths in the last week, the one that absolutely got to me was the comment of the past Prime Minister—the deposed Prime Minister, now a backbencher—Mr Rudd in which he said that Mr Abbott doesn't have 'my temperament or my experience to govern'. When I heard that I said, 'Thank God!' Imagine the temperament of Mr Rudd, with language that I have not heard in shearing sheds or stockyards coming out of Mr Rudd's mouth. When it comes to experience, it is an interesting point to note that when Mr Abbott becomes the Prime Minister of this country he will have had more ministerial experience than any other Prime Minister coming into that position in recent Australian history. That is what we in the electorate have had to put up with over the last few days.

We once again have imposed on us a Prime Minister who went to the last election saying, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead,' the same person who said, 'I will not interfere in the private health rebate.' Of course, we have seen her doing exactly that. We see a circumstance in my own state—and how disappointing that the last speaker herself did not draw attention to the damage being wreaked upon the state of Western Australia by this federal Labor government. Why? Because they will have no seats. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.