Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

At the end of this first week when the Prime Minister has now declared that we are in a period of good government, after 520 days of bad government, we see in the answers to the questions that we have received today the failing government that continues to trot out the same old platitudes. The 520 days of bad government simply continues at the end of this first week of the new parliamentary year.

I want to take note in particular of the response to the question from Senator Conroy to Senator Abetz. Senator Conroy asked:

Has the Prime Minister made yet another 'captain's pick' and agreed to have Australia's next submarine fleet built by Japan?

I particularly want to note this one because, for those who might not quite be aware, what we are talking about here is the largest single government project since Federation. So the scale of what we are talking about here with these submarines is nothing to be pushed to the side. We are talking about the single largest government project since Federation. In response to that question—has the Prime Minister made a captain's pick and decided to do a secret, dirty, dodgy deal behind the scenes with Japan?—we had trouble hearing, but it needs to show on the record that the response from Senator Abetz was a clear no to those of us who were here in the chamber. Senator Wong made an effort to make sure that that went on the transcript, and just in case there is a problem I want to make note of it in my response today as well. We have had an assurance now from Senator Abetz that the answer to that question is: no, the Prime Minister has not made a captain's pick. But the truth is going to come out, and that is why it is important that we get this on the record. What we have seen so far with this government is that, day after day, this is a government that says one thing and does another; a Prime Minister who has been caught on too many occasions saying one thing and doing another.

There was also Senator Conroy's supplementary question which went to the fact that we have been led to understand that the Prime Minister's department or some other department of government actually went to the trouble of preparing draft talking points—draft media releases and draft supporting documents—to make an announcement that a deal had indeed been done with Japan. But they are hiding from it; the minister said he could not confirm it and that he is going to take it on notice. It will be very interesting to get a factually accurate and truthful answer to that question, because this is a government that is running away as fast as it can from each of the promises it has made. It is revealing lie after lie, day after day, and the Australian people are absolutely awake to it.

But of all of the questions that were taken today I have to say that in my view the very worst performance was from Senator Ronaldson, who said he was 'simply unaware' of the fact that this government has slashed legal aid funding. He said, 'Yes, there is $1.3 billion going to legal services,' but a cut of $15 million has a very significant impact on the veterans that he is supposed to be representing—not just here in the chamber, but in the cabinet. To be unaware that there has been a cut to the services is an indictment on the minister's lack of awareness of the need to look after the vet community. He has been presiding during a period when they have shut down veterans' offices right across the country. Throughout New South Wales, there have been too many closures—one in particular in the seat of Robertson on the Central Coast—which has a large vet population—serving the entire population of over 300,000.

Make no mistake, while applauding the efforts of the private sector in supporting a commemoration of Anzac, this government has been slashing services for our veterans. And the most notable of those is the slashing of ADF pay, which is a great disgrace. I am very mindful of the efforts of many senators in this place to call them to redress there. This is a government that is not answering the questions that the Australian people are asking. They are not truthfully answering the questions that are being asked here in this chamber, and today we saw another performance of a government that is out of control—a government in chaos. The only method we see is their coming in every day and denying the mistakes that they have made. Senator Ronaldson's failure to look after the Defence community—those who have served our country—is on the record again today. His failure to accurately and truthfully represent what he is doing is also on the record today. (Time expired)

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister representing the Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, Senator Cash, to a question without notice asked by Senator Carr today relating to the East West Link.

Where to begin? In the grab bag of grievance and opportunism put forward by the opposition today in a lame attempt to perform the important role of an opposition holding the government to account, I am not sure where to pick the peak. But I will start with this, Mr Deputy President Marshall: you are a Victorian senator here, as am I. Today we saw from Senator Kim Carr an attack upon the government for actually trying to deliver one of Victoria's most critical infrastructure projects—the East West Link. This government is proud to have put forward money to make sure Victoria gets its fair share of important nation-building infrastructure. This government has ensured and will seek to continue to ensure that the economic vandalism of those opposite, who seek to tear up contracts signed by the previous Victorian government to deliver this critical road project that will stop Melbourne from coming to a standstill every time a single car breaks down on the West Gate Bridge, does not continue. This government will oppose the efforts of the Victorian government in spending a billion dollars to put 7,000 people out of work—in spending a billion dollars to invoke sovereign risk and make it so that everyone in Australia, and every state and Commonwealth government, will have a risk premium built into their contracts, all because of the actions of the Labor Party.

But that is not what the Labor Party said when this project was first brought forward. In fact, Mr Shorten, the Leader of the Opposition, described the East West Link as 'crucial to jobs and economic growth.' He also said Labor would not support the tearing up of contracts, just as the then state Leader of the Opposition, Daniel Andrews, said before the state election. But now that he has been elected, now that the former leader of the opposition has to kowtow to the militant CFMEU thugs in Victoria, what we have is a Labor Party that is determined to tear up a contract and try to pretend this will not invoke not only a cost for Victorians now but a significant cost into the future. Every government until this point has abided by the contracts that previous governments have signed. This government, when confronted with the mess of the National Broadband Network—that was not subject to a full cost-benefit analysis, that was running late, and that was tens of billions of dollars over budget—abided by the contracts and renegotiated them under those terms to deliver a faster broadband network to the majority of Australians.

Yet those opposite, kowtowing to the noisy Greens in the inner suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney—in this case, in particular, in Melbourne—want to deny the right of a Victorian government to effectively ever sign a contract that can be trusted again. Yesterday in the newspaper the Victorian government was threatening legislation to abrogate a contract and to abrogate the terms of that contract. The previous Victorian government was faced with debacle after debacle—in particular, the desalination plant and the myki ticketing system—but that government lived by the terms of the contracts signed by the previous government. Yet this government in Victoria—the new government—supported by those opposite, comes into this place and criticises this government for delivering Victoria's fair share of infrastructure funding—$1.5 billion to build a 22-kilometre road to relieve congestion in Melbourne. Just as the creation of the Western Ring Road and the Northern Ring Road did in Melbourne in the 1990s and 2000s, this would create massive job opportunities not only in building but by actually increasing work opportunities in what are now sometimes dormitory suburbs. There is a huge logistics business that comes out of western Melbourne now because of the western ring road. There are new manufacturing industries in northern Melbourne because of access to the ring road and the airport. Yet this opposition wants to put 7,000 people out of work and support the tearing up of contracts, despite what they said previously, which is that they would not support that. And they described this project as crucial to jobs and economic growth.

When it comes to submarines, the Labor Party cries crocodile tears, because, if they cared about ASC and if they cared about jobs in Adelaide, they would have done something rather than strip capital expenditure out of the defence budget year after year after year. That saw defence expenditure fall overall to its lowest level since before World War II. The Labor Party is nothing but opportunistic. It is crying crocodile tears for the jobs of Australians.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have sat through numerous debates in this chamber over the last 10 years, but, jeez, you hear some beauties in here! And when I say 'beauties' I really have got my tongue in my cheek. When I hear a parliamentary secretary from Victoria use the terminology he has used around job losses, saying that Labor is 'crying crocodile tears', I actually do question the quality of some of the people in this building. If you could feign some sympathy for the terrible announcements by your government that unfortunately see thousands of Australian jobs going, Senator Ryan—through you, Mr Deputy President Marshall—it would not be so bleedingly obvious that you do not care about Australian jobs.

Senator Ryan actually used the word that I was trying to figure out. There are a lot of words that one could wrap one's tongue around to describe this Abbott government, but I will have to use Senator Ryan's word, and it is 'debacle'. And what a debacle we have seen—18 months or 520 days of debacle—in this country! And the saddest part is that as each day goes by, I think: 'Goodness me! No wonder the Australian public have turned off Australian politics!'

When the Prime Minister came in, he had a few three word slogans, like 'grown-up government' and 'no more surprises'. And one of his classics, of course, was 'Stop the boats'. A lot of us thought that 'Stop the boats' was about those poor souls who were paying some of the scum of the world, people smugglers, to bring them in to Australia, but when the Prime Minister said 'Stop the boats' I had no idea that he meant stopping building Australian boats! I had no idea that 'Stop the boats' actually referred to submarines!

I do not come from South Australia, but I have actually got it really clear: we have seen a debacle, particularly in the last few weeks. We have known that from the downfall of the previous Minister for Defence, Senator Johnston, who, when quizzed in this chamber by Senator Gallacher about Australian jobs at the Australian Submarine Corporation, in attacking Senator Gallacher uttered that infamous line:

… I wouldn't trust them to build a canoe …

And it has just escalated from there.

It is just not good enough. If the Prime Minister had—and I do not know whether he has—done a deal with the Japanese to build submarines for Australia, he should have just had the guts to come and face the Australian people and say, 'A deal is done.' But instead he wheeled out poor defenceless Senator Edwards. He is a government senator from South Australia who, I have no doubt, has compassion for Australians' jobs in his state. The Prime Minister wheeled him out, and, under the guise of getting his vote and maybe other South Australians' votes in the leadership contest last Monday, gave him some loose guarantee. Senator Edwards has been trying to defend this. And I have no doubt that Senator Edwards was told by the Prime Minister—and if I am wrong the Prime Minister can come out and defend himself—that he would allow the ASC to enter a competitive tender.

As to the word 'tender'—fine! You can wheel out all the government ministers—and I saw that shocking interview with the now Minister for Defence, Mr Andrews, in which he used the line, when being questioned down there in Adelaide, that he was the minister and he would use the words that he wanted to use, and in which he came out with this phrase 'a competitive evaluation process'. What the hell that means I have absolutely no idea! But if there are some whiz-kids out there who can explain to me how a competitive evaluation process equals a competitive tender then I am all ears—and that is no pun intended when I am having a crack at the Prime Minister!

But, with the greatest respect, and in fairness, it is not just about the jobs that we have seen lost in South Australia in submarine building and shipbuilding and manufacturing; it is also the risk we put our submariners at—not to mention the thousands and thousands of jobs that will be gone in this country, like Australian jobs in the automobile manufacturing industry.

This government, in its time in opposition, used three word slogans like 'grown-up government' and 'no more surprises'. My goodness me—I have never realised how much I have missed truck driving, because at least when you are truck driving and you are out there in the Kimberley and the Pilbara, you are meeting real Australians. I was meeting real people. I was meeting genuine people. And I cannot put any faith in there being genuine people in this government because they have not even got the intestinal fortitude to face the Australian people and say: 'Yes, we've traded off your job. We've given it to Japan.'

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

If Senator Sterle had spoken to real people in the last 12 months, he would understand that real people, all Australians, wanted to get rid of the job-destroying carbon tax—the tax that sent Australian jobs overseas, including jobs in the motoring industry, under the watch of Senator Kim Carr as industry minister. If Senator Sterle had bothered to speak to any Australians in the last 12 months, he would understand that Australians liked the wealth that the mining industry brought to Australia. But the Labor Party, with their lackeys in the Greens, put in that mining tax that stopped investment in Australian industry.

I would ask Senator Sterle to have a look at the Bowen Basin. Have a look at Mackay, Bowen, Rockhampton and Townsville now. All those people who worked in the mining industry are now looking for work. All those small businesses that supported the mining industry and supported the economy of Townsville and Mackay are now struggling because of the Labor Party's indifference to the mining industry, and their continuous attacks on those who invest in Australia in mining.

If Senator Sterle had spoken to any Australians, he also would have understood that all Australians have an abhorrence of the unrestricted flow of illegal maritime arrivals into Australia. More importantly, as well as abhorrence, there is despair that so many fellow human beings lost their lives because of the Greens political party and the Australian Labor Party welcoming and supporting criminal people-smugglers, which allowed this to happen in our country.

They are just three very, very important things that this government has addressed. We have stopped the boats, we have got rid of the mining tax and we have given the mining industry a bit of support and encouragement.

On infrastructure, Mr Abbott wants to be known as the 'infrastructure Prime Minister', and I tell you he will be. As I drive the length and breadth of roads in Queensland, I am amazed—and sometimes a little bit annoyed, I might say!—by the enormous amount of work that is being done on Queensland roads, and this is happening elsewhere as well. The Northern Sydney freight corridor; the Great Northern Highway and the North West Coastal Highway in Western Australia; the Midland Highway in Tasmania; the Bruce Highway in Queensland, almost permanently under repair under this government; the Western Sydney Infrastructure Plan; the Pacific Highway in New South Wales: all of these things are actually happening under the current coalition government. And that is just what is happening now. We also have plans for additional roadworks: the WestConnex, the Toowoomba second range crossing, the north-south road corridor in Adelaide—the list goes on.

But the most important thing this government has done is started the long, hard task of turning around the economy after the Labor government's financial incompetence and mismanagement. I remind listeners that, when Labor came to office, they were given $60 billion in credit, $60 billion in the bank, by the Howard Liberal government. At the end of their term, just six short years later, the Labor government had not just spent that $60 billion but run up a debt which, if it had not been corrected, would be approaching $700 billion, costing us some $30 million each and every day—which has to be borrowed—in interest payments. Imagine how many schools, hospitals and roads we could build with $30 million a day, if it had not been for the Labor-Greens alliance's wasteful trashing of the Australian economy.

So we have a big job to do but we do not resile from it. It is going to be tough, it is not going to be popular, but it is something that has to be done because that $700 billion has to be repaid by Australia. Governments themselves have no money; they only use taxpayers' money. Shame on the Australian Labor Party and their Greens allies that they could have put future Australia to that expense. (Time expired)

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

I focus today on the very disappointing answers given by Senator Ronaldson in question time. Senator Brown asked a very legitimate question of Senator Ronaldson in regard to the impact on veterans of the government's decision to cut $15 million from legal aid in last year's budget. That is an important question to ask, and it is our job as the opposition to ask such questions. I understand that, because of the chaos, dysfunction and disunity in the government, Senator Ronaldson may well been distracted this week; but the way he handled Senator Brown's question was absolutely abysmal.

First of all, he commented that he did not agree with the premise of the question. Well, that is fair enough. But he then went on to comment that he thought it was 'a very silly question'. I do not think that asking questions about the reduction of any sort of funding to support veterans—and if it is not happening he could have just said, 'No, it's not happening'—is 'silly'. Does the minister think that veterans are not worthy of legal aid? Why else would he call it 'a very silly question'?

We know there is chaos and confusion on the government side of this chamber. We have seen it all week. We know they do not talk to each other, obviously. The minister does not know what is going on in his own portfolio. He does not even appear to know which senators are from his own home state. How atrocious is that? If we talk to high-school students, between them they can usually tell us the names of the senators from their home state. Here is a senator who does not even know which state Senator Brown comes from. Actually, I am not concerned that he did not know which state Senator Brown came from; I am concerned that he did not know that she was not from his state. I find that a bit strange. I know who all the government senators from my state of Tasmania are and I find it passing strange that Senator Ronaldson does not. I am wondering what else Senator Ronaldson might have had on his mind—if there are still things going on over on that side in regard to leadership challenges that Senator Ronaldson might be focused on.

As I said, it is pretty unfortunate that the Minister for Veterans' Affairs could not have given a more satisfactory answer, because it is an issue of utmost concern. Both the New South Wales Bar Association and the Australian Bar Association have condemned the cruel and unnecessary cuts that Minister Ronaldson's government have made to legal aid. We know that these cuts have impacted on the people that Minister Ronaldson is meant to protect—that is, veterans and their families. The New South Wales Bar Association commented recently:

Veterans and their families will no longer be funded to retain private lawyers in cases where they challenge decisions of the Australian Government in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for a pension or Gold Card.

They continued:

It is troubling that war veterans and their families may face the prospect of not having legal representation or legal representation of their own choice when challenging decisions of the Commonwealth in relation to pensions and the Gold Card. In these very same cases the Commonwealth is routinely represented by lawyers of its choice.

I am sure that many senators have helped constituents who have been disadvantaged by an erroneous decision made by a government department or agency—I know I have. However, removing funding for a program that helps veterans and their families—amongst many other groups, I might add—is unfair and completely unnecessary. I can just imagine a poor war widow having to take on the might of the Commonwealth government unrepresented because she cannot gain a lawyer under legal aid to fight against an erroneous decision. She should be able to gain legal representation of her own choosing to fight on her behalf. The fact that she cannot is utterly unfair. It is an extremely disappointing outcome and an entirely unnecessary situation. It was extremely disappointing answer from the minister, who should be on top of his portfolio and should be aware of what is happening. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.