Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Employment (Senator Abetz) to questions without notice asked today.

This is a government in absolute chaos. Not only is this a government that lied its way to power; it is a government that now lies to its own backbench. It is a government that could not lie straight in bed. And here we have Senator Edwards claiming that he had a double victory yesterday. One victory was putting Tony Abbott, the current Prime Minister, back in as the Prime Minister. I think that one might be a bit of a Pyrrhic victory. The other victory, he says, was the victory to get a competitive tendering process for the submarines that this country needs for its defence and its ongoing technological development.

In The Flinders News, we have Senator Edwards saying that he got a competitive tendering process. The article states:

This was enough for Senator Edwards to throw his weight behind the embattled Liberal leader to vote against a leadership spill at Parliament House in Canberra this morning.

I have to tell you, I did not hear anything from Senator Edwards when the announcement was made that they could not build a canoe in the Adelaide shipyards. I did not hear a word out of him for months, until the South Australian public and the Australian public said, 'This is unacceptable. It is not acceptable that our defence industries can be sent overseas because there's been a deal done between the Prime Minister of Australia and the Japanese government.' Jobs were not important then. We never heard a word from Senator Edwards—we did not hear a word from any of the South Australian senators. Questions were asked on this issue time after time after time in this place; then, when Senator Edward suddenly discovered that it was a massive political problem, not only for the government but for himself personally and for the re-election of senators in South Australia, suddenly his job became more important than anything else, and that is when he grew a backbone and started to argue for the job to be done in South Australia.

Then we had the situation with the chaos in this government. Senator Edwards got a phone call from the Prime Minister and said, 'I will support you if you meet your commitment for a tender process in South Australia.' That is how good Senator Edwards is—not very good at all. He was absolutely silent on this issue until his own job came under some pressure. All the coalition are interested in and all the Prime Minister is interested in are their jobs, not the jobs of Australian workers in the shipbuilding industry, nor the jobs, which they just sacrificed, in the car manufacturing industry in this country.

Senator Edwards said that he had:

… scored a big win for South Australia with an assurance from the Prime Minister that the Australian Submarine Corporation and South Australian shipbuilders will be given the opportunity to tender for the Future Submarine contract.

Well, Senator Edwards, you were lied to the same as the Australian public were lied to prior to the election. You should understand that this government cannot be trusted and that this government has no credibility.

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

Mr Deputy President, I raise a point of order. Could you tell Senator Cameron—he has been here long enough to know—that you do not talk directly to other senators; every remark should be through you, as Deputy President of the chamber.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I believe the comments were being directed through me, Senator Macdonald, so there is no point of order. But I do remind senators of the standing orders and the need to address the chair.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a government that lied to the Australian public before the last election, and this is a government that lies to its own backbench. This is a government that cannot be trusted on any issue. They cannot even give proper responses to a backbencher raising an issue. They tell the backbencher that there will be a competitive tender, and then later it is 'a process of competitive evaluation' and now it is 'an opportunity to engage'. This is rubbish coming from the coalition. (Time expired)

Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The gall of Labor senators, of Senator Cameron, to come in here in the first week of the new parliamentary year to talk about lies and chaos!

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Senate needs to come to order.

Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to talk about good government for a moment. Last week was an important anniversary. Next week will be an important anniversary. I am just wondering whether colleagues on the Labor side know what those two anniversaries are.

Opposition senators interjecting—

You don't even know the first anniversary! What about the second anniversary—

Opposition senators interjecting—

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me remind senators again that—

Senator Bilyk interjecting—

I am actually speaking, Senator Bilyk. I remind senators that they should address the remarks through the chair.

Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, let me remind you of two important anniversaries. The first is 3 February. You might recall that as the day Fraser called the 1983 election and Hawke replaced Hayden. The second important anniversary is 16 February, the day Mr Hawke gave a very important election speech. It is shameful that a coalition senator should have to educate Labor senators about their own political history. I would like to demonstrate an important point: Labor people themselves are trying to tell Labor senators in this place to perform better. Do not think for one moment that these people on the other side are representative of the views of Labor's former leaders or even of the views of people in the current Labor Party. Let me reflect briefly on what Mr Hawke had to say on 16 February 1983. Talking about the economic situation, Mr Hawke said: 'We'—the federal Labor Party—'will not be able to just spend that way out of the mess. We must work our way out of it together. Australia needs long-term national solutions.' Let us jump ahead to last year and what Bob Hawke said about the performance of Labor senators and the federal Labor opposition. As reported in The Australian newspaper, Mr Hawke said what is required is the same thing as he had to experience. He said: 'It is important to have a Prime Minister and a Treasurer and a competent ministry which understands the issue and is prepared to make hard decisions.' He went on to say: 'We could not go on maintaining the standard of living that we have become accustomed to. Structural adjustments to the economy must happen and spending must be cut across the board.'

Let us look at what Bill Hayden had to say just a few of months ago. He said Labor senators, the federal Labor opposition, needed to establish some economic credibility. He urged federal Labor to be a party that built economic credibility with voters and he stressed the need to reduce the influence of factions and reform the party's internal structures and overhaul its policies to regain government. This is a Labor opposition in the Senate that is not even listening to the informed experience of former Labor leaders Bob Hawke and Bill Hayden.

Let us jump briefly to an important admission that unfortunately was lost over the last two weeks. I do not mind saying that, for a brief moment over the last few weeks, the government lost its focus—and Labor got away with a couple of important things. But you cannot escape how it was reported in the paper. Labor's shadow Treasurer, Chris Bowen, said, 'Labor doesn't rule out cuts to payments.' Ooh, silence!

Opposition senators interjecting—

Didn't you see that, Senator Polley? I will send it to you.

Senator Bilyk interjecting—

Oh, you did see it?

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, on a point of order: the senator should actually call me by the correct name if he wants to try and insult me.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Bilyk. Senator Smith, I regret to inform you that your time is up.

Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a government of chaos and this is a government that cannot be trusted. That has been proven by the Prime Minister's own admission today when he said, 'Good government starts today.' Well, what have we been living with for the last 500 or so days? We have been living with a bad government. The fact is that another broken promise has been made by the Prime Minister today, and that is: good government does not start today; it is the same bad government because it has the same bad policies. It is only going to be a matter of time before those in revolt on the backbench in government realise that nothing has changed—that it is the same old bad government that Australia has been putting up with for the last 16 months. And why? Because it has the same bad policies.

It is not going to take long, I believe, for the backbench to start figuring that out—so much so that Julie Bishop has declined to say how she actually voted yesterday in the spill motion. We know she is keeping her leadership options open. On top of that, we know that Malcolm Turnbull is keeping his leadership options open—so much so that he gave a very fine, some would say, leadership speech, just at the end of last month, in the US. It was a leadership speech where he articulated what leaders should be—what a leader of a country should be, no doubt. 'Leaders must be decision makers,' he said. 'It is vitally important,' he said, 'that, as a matter of social justice and political reality, structural changes are seen to be fair across the board.' That sounds to me a bit like a pitch from someone vying for the top job. We know how far Mr Turnbull will go to get that top job. In recent reports he said he would sell out on climate change, his No. 1 policy issue—the policy issue on which he said, 'I want to be leader, if I have a team that is committed to climate change.' But, when it comes to the top job, if that is what it takes—selling out on his principles and his conviction—he will let the issue of climate change go.

And we know that Julie Bishop is in a similar vein. You have Julie Bishop, Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott—three leaders: one currently in place as Prime Minister and trying to convince his colleagues that his good government starts today, and the other two waiting in the wings.

But what has not changed through all of this? It really does not matter which one of these three will be leader at any point in time during the term of this government; it does not matter about the leadership of this government, because what is bad about it is: its policies, which continue to hurt Australians. And we know that Julie Bishop and Malcolm Turnbull have supported those policies. They have supported cuts to pensions, cuts to family payments, a GP tax, $100,000 university degrees, and cutting pay to Defence personnel. They have supported, with Tony Abbott, this government's agenda. And that is why it does not matter which one of them becomes leader in the future.

Australians are aware of this. Australians are aware that they are living under the regime of a bad government, and they are also becoming increasingly aware that the only way to get rid of these bad policies is to change the government. And that day cannot come soon enough, because Australian people deserve fairness. The Australian ethos of a fair go has been lost under this government. Those on the backbench of this government know that; that is why they revolted yesterday. That is why the spill motion came on.

But Tony Abbott came in today and said, 'Good government starts today.' His own admission, therefore, is that he has been leading a bad government—a bad government with bad policies that hurt all Australians.

Labor stands for the complete opposite of that. We stand for fairness. We stand for compassion. We stand for equality. And we stand for social justice. That is what a Labor government will deliver—unlike this mean-hearted coalition government that continues to hurt all Australians.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I find this concerning about senators such as Senator Singh and Senator Cameron: where is their memory? Senator Singh was talking about action on climate change. Mr Deputy President, correct me if I am wrong, but there was a Prime Minister called Mr Kevin Rudd and he said that the greatest moral challenge of our time was to act on climate change, and so he went to bring in an emissions trading scheme. Then people realised that they did not understand it, first of all, and then that it was a monster tax on everything: that every time you plugged an electrical item into a power point you started paying it. In fact, it was the highest price in the world. It drove out jobs, shut down manufacturing and processing, shifted our cement industry overseas and affected our motor vehicle industry. And these people talk about jobs! They talk about policies!

Turning to Senator Cameron, perhaps he does not remember the run-up to the 2010 election—it is probably a long time back for Senator Cameron to remember; he may not remember back that far—but the point was that the Prime Minister at the time, their leader, was called Miss Julia Gillard, and she said, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' Then I noticed that, because the Greens were the dominant force in that political agreement between the Gillard Labor government and were driving the agenda, Senator Cameron and others just kowtowed to their requests. I actually saw them in here voting for a carbon tax. Senator Abetz, you remember it, I am sure—

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

I remember.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and so would Senator Bushby. Those opposite voted for it. They said we were never going to have it, but the Greens were dominating their whole government policy. And of course they want to forget that. It was about $9 billion, growing each year, that carbon tax. Thank goodness it has gone.

Here is the thing I find amazing when we talk about policies. I want to refer to two things. Mr Deputy President Marshall, I do not know how you drive your car—and I am sure you are a very good driver of your motor vehicle—but one thing is for sure: I am sure you do not have one foot pushing down on the accelerator and one foot pushing down on the brake, both at the same time. That would be strange. But I remember that, back in 2009, the Reserve Bank was raising interest rates to slow the economy, while the Labor Party in government was borrowing money and spending it to stimulate the economy. How crazy is that! And what are we left with? We are left with this great big debt. And it is getting very serious.

Mr Deputy President, you would be well aware that a man I respect enormously, Mr Glenn Stevens, the Reserve Bank governor, addressed cabinet just recently and said: 'You are facing serious financial problems.' And he is correct. We are borrowing $110 million a day and spending some $40 million a day to pay the interest.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You're an economic fraud.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will take the interjection because this is not a laughing matter—it is about how we leave our finances for the future generations of this country. You probably do not care about being an economic wrecker; you are just a political thug with the Shor-Con faction, doing whatever you wish to do. In the First World War my grandfather was over there with Senator Conroy's relatives helping them out. My late father was a rear gunner in a Lancaster bomber, over there in Senator Conroy's former country, helping them out. I see and I read about what our ancestors did to build this country. Those opposite want to leave our future generations wallowing in debt.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are a typical National Party economic illiterate.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Conroy, your judgement of the economy is about as good as your judgement of football teams—absolutely hopeless. I want to put that point on the record. We have a serious problem. I said to one of the Labor senators prior to the last election that, no matter who won government, there would be serious financial problems with the budget. I do not know why those opposite in the Labor Party, who proposed some $5½ billion of savings when they were in government, are now opposing our bringing those savings in. Why are they doing that? Are they here just to disrupt? Are they here to mortgage our children's future? I ask the crossbenchers: if the budget is not brought into some sort of respect—

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are not going to have a surplus beyond 2019.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You were going to give us a surplus. Wayne Maxwell Swan was going to give us a budget surplus. You never even got close. The last time you had a surplus was 1989—you would still have been in primary school. Don't come in here talking about budget surpluses—you do not even understand what they are. If we do not get the books right and the balances right, the future of our children will be a future of higher taxes. (Time expired)

Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Abetz said that the government is committed to the best value for the taxpayer in respect of the project to build, sustain and maintain Australia's future submarines. I think that is a slight movement away from previous governments that have accepted that there may well be a premium associated with building ships and submarines in Australia—it was in the Australian National Audit Office report, which set out that previous governments had accepted that. We then go to the famous election promise, that the submarines would be built right here in Australia, in Adelaide. This government has prevaricated and shifted ground, until we arrive at today where it is reported that the coalition position in respect of submarine building in Adelaide is 'as clear as mud.' That is what has been reported—it is as clear as mud.

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

Where was that reported?

Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was reported in InDaily, which is an internet publication in Adelaide.

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

Ha, ha, ha!

Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well you may laugh, but you have to understand that you cannot move in South Australia without being approached about this issue. It is a deeply felt issue. Have a look at the result in the electorate of Fisher—an unprecedented Labor victory there. In the seat of Davenport—and this is what is sending the shivers up the spines of some people in Adelaide—it was a 58-42 Liberal-held seat, handed down from father to son. It is now 53-47—they are a mere 1,700 votes from losing one of the jewels in the Liberal crown in the State parliament. I do not take much notice of polls—I am sure those on the other side are having a casual look—but Newspoll says the figures are 59-41. That brings a lot of Liberal seats into play. The predominant issues in both Fisher and Davenport were the economy, jobs and submarines. Senator Edwards is probably not the only one who has come late to this issue, and he is now ardently supporting the building, sustaining and maintaining of defence ships, submarines and whatever else we can to offset the dastardly decision on car manufacturing. This issue will not go away.

Coincidentally, I think there are 11 Liberal members of the coalition government in South Australia. It seems a little unusual that Senator Edwards was able to give a commitment from the Prime Minister that there will be a competitive tender and then the party vote was brought forward—we know that the party vote was 39 to 61. Was there something untoward at play there? I do not know and I do not really care, but the public will draw their own conclusions if Senator Edwards has been set up and then torn down the next day from competitive tender to competitive evaluation. One reader said it was 'psychobabble and confragulation.' I did look up 'confragulation' in the dictionary but I could not find it, but if that is what people are saying about your minister's press conference today, surrounded by concerned Liberal MPs—concerned for the future of South Australia and for the future of the South Australia economy but also concerned about their own survival—then things to be looked at.

I think this will play out down the track, all the way to the next election. You will be judged on how you have acted. You have made policy on the run today. You have made a confused but hopeful public more confused and less hopeful, especially when your minister's appalling performance today could best be summed up as 'clear as mud'—do not take it from me but read the paper. Senator Edwards has also been undressed—set up, undressed and let down really shabbily. South Australia deserves better. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.