Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My grievance tonight is about a government that has no clear plan to uplift the nation, a government that has no vision and a government that has no sense of purpose. It wasted its time in opposition and came to government without an agenda, except to oppose Labor. Tony Abbott had a plan to get into government, but no plan to govern. Malcolm Turnbull had a plan to get rid of Tony Abbott, but also no plan to govern. That is why the government is so consumed by internal rivalry. The internals are driving the agenda, not the welfare or needs of the nation. That is why the Turnbull government is acting like an opposition in exile sitting on the government benches. Everything is about ideology; nothing is about real people and what the challenges are for them in their everyday lives and how we position ourselves for the future.

Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull are locked in a downward spiral, and they are taking the government down with them. Just how bereft their agenda is was epitomised by what happened today. Of all days to propose a weakening of racial discrimination laws, to do it on Harmony Day is rubbing salt into the wounds of those Australians who feel passionately about the need for us to be a harmonious society in which everyone is respected for who they are, regardless of their origins.

The government has failed to explain exactly what it is that they want people to be able to say that they are not allowed to say right now. The fact that they are proposing this on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination—on a day when our schools in all of our electorates are having young kids wear orange shirts and orange ribbons to school to recognise harmony in our multicultural nation—is, I believe, an absolute tragedy. It also flies in the face of the Prime Minister's very clear promise made on 28 October last year, when he assured Australians that he had no plans to change section 18C, because the government 'did not take an 18C amendment proposal to the election'.

The rhetoric about freedom of speech stands in stark contrast to the way that they have acted with regard to marriage equality. That is why 20 of the country's leading business leaders, including the heads of Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank, last week took the decision to publicly urge the government to swiftly resolve the marriage equality debate by doing its job of having a vote in parliament. I accept that the coalition had a promise to have a plebiscite. They tried to get that through the parliament. They fulfilled their promise to the electorate. They now have a situation where, clearly, a plebiscite is not going to be agreed to by this or, I suspect, any future parliament. So why not get on with the reform? This is a distraction to other issues that impact on all Australians, particularly the running of our economy.

How ironic was it that those people, including the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, were out there leading the charge against business leaders—including the head of Qantas, Alan Joyce, who was singled out on this issue—in spite of the fact that they talk about freedom of speech in other issues. The government will defend people's rights to say abusive things on the basis of race but wants to slap a gag on businesspeople who are wanting them to get on with the business of governing. This comes at a time when companies have a direct interest in representing the interests of their workforce, many of whom are directly impacted by this. An industry like the tourism sector, including Qantas, would benefit greatly from marriage equality as it would produce economic activity and help create jobs.

While the government is wasting their time on 18C and their internal brawls, we have a real problem with the economy. We have seen the deficit increase by more than eight times. We now have a $100 billion increase in net debt, equivalent to $4,000 for every man, woman and child in Australia. Unemployment is now higher than it was during the global financial crisis and underemployment is at a record 1.1 million. The economy is growing below trend and, to cap it all off, wages have not just flatlined; they are actually going backwards for the first time in a long while in real terms, prompting the Reserve Bank of Australia to say this today in the commentary that they make after their board meeting. They said:

... growth in labour incomes had been unusually weak.

... if it were to persist, would have implications for consumption growth and the risks posed by the level of household debt.

That is the Reserve Bank of Australia warning this government, and what is the response? We have a cut to penalty rates and a government refusing to support Labor's position of not supporting that cut going forward for some 700,000 working Australians, some of the poorest people in our community—people who rely on penalty rates to put food on the table, to pay school fees, to pay their mortgage. They do not work on Sundays and do irregular hours for fun; they do it because they have to and they rely upon that. For the first time we have an industrial tribunal in this country not making trade-offs but just a straight wage cut and a cut to living standards.

But it is consistent, of course, with the other cuts that we have seen that are taking money out of the economy from the people at the bottom end, therefore undermining Australia as an inclusive society. There were cuts to the age pension of 330,000 elderly Australians from 1 January this year, cuts to family tax benefits; cuts to single parent families; cuts to young people between the ages of 22 and 24 by pushing them onto a lower youth allowance; cuts to funding for schools, TAFEs and universities; and cuts to Medicare, our universal health system, by freezing the GP rebate. Many more people have to foot the bill for their health care. None of this has anything to do with strong economic growth. This is about a government that is talking about giving a tax cut to the big end of town of $50 billion at the same time as these massive cuts are coming in.

At the same time, when it comes to my area of infrastructure, there is a failure to invest. If we are going to have inclusive growth and growth in jobs, we need to invest in infrastructure and we need to invest in people, and this government is doing neither. Australia needs a government with a vision for dealing with the real issues that concern people's daily lives: jobs, infrastructure, living standards, education, health care and the environment. Above all, we also need a government that is prepared to appeal to people's better angels rather than create division in society, and that is what the change to 18C that has been proposed by the government today does. That is why it is so disappointing. This government wants to be in government and Malcolm Turnbull wants to be in The Lodge simply to stop those on my side of the House in the Labor Party from governing. It is occupation rather than doing anything with the job. I want to be in government because I understand that sitting around a cabinet table you can make real decisions that benefit the people that I seek to represent and that benefit our nation. At the moment, this government is so divided it simply is doing neither. (Time expired)