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

It is not a sexist comment; it is an indication of how she came across, which is indicative, of course, of a government struggling to get out of its self-inflicted mess. They are starting to sink in their own mire of self-created mess.

And here she was, trying to justify herself as the great economic reformer—the one that opposed every single Howard-Costello government reform—all of a sudden remade. All that she could talk about last night was the Hawke-Keating reform era. She then airbrushed out the Howard-Costello era—she just could not bring herself to that—which of course went down like a lead balloon in the audience that she was addressing.

But what we have now is a government that nobody trusts. Mr Rudd does not trust her because she has form. The mining industry no longer trusts her—the mining industry which is so important and vital to the economic, and thus the social, fabric of our country. They do not trust her anymore. And of course the Australian people cannot trust her any more, given that, on the very day before the election, she made a solemn promise that there would be no carbon tax—absolutely no carbon tax—and yet, straight after the election, she is now entertaining a carbon tax. She will be seeking to implement a carbon tax, and she said so last night. So to this audience where she says, ‘A deal is a deal,’ she was in fact announcing that she was breaking her very own deal, her solemn promise to the Australian people. This is a Labor government in a mess, and what we need— (Time expired)