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

No, Senator Macdonald does not make a great speech. He is absolutely full of nonsense when he gets on his feet. He spent 10 minutes not even going near the issue of marriage equality. I want to indicate clearly that marriage equality is an issue that I believe needs to be dealt with. It is an issue that discriminates against people who love each other in this country, and it is an issue that should not be determined by what Senator Macdonald describes as a 'referendum'. He said 'referendum' on a number of occasions. We are not having, according to the coalition, a referendum, so Senator Macdonald needs to get his facts right. It is a plebiscite; it is not a referendum. I will come to that later, but the plebiscite, in my view, is an absolute abrogation of the responsibility of members of parliament and senators who were elected here to make decisions on the basis of a decent society in this country.

I will divert, given that Senator Macdonald probably spent two minutes out of his 20-minute speech on the issue of marriage equality. So I will divert to deal with some of the other issues before I come back to the important issue of marriage equality. Senator Macdonald spoke about the hypocrisy of saying one thing before you are elected and doing a different thing after you are elected. Senator Cormann is sitting here. Maybe Senator Cormann could give Senator Macdonald a lesson in the 2013-14 budget—the broken promises that were layered through that 2013-14 budget. There were the attacks on pensioners, when pensions were not going to be touched, to try to force down the increases in pensions to make it tougher for pensioners to survive in this country. There was the broken promise on health—$80 billion taken out of health and education.

Senator Cormann thought that was such a great manoeuvre, that he would break out the Havana and have a cigar after the budget to celebrate taking $80 billion out of health and education in this country. They cracked out the Havana, taking away the living standards of pensioners in this country. They made promises on Gonski and walked away from education promises. They walked away from promises on family benefits. They walked away from promises on health and imposing a $7 co-payment. They walked away on promises on superannuation and took away support for low-income earners to get an opportunity to have superannuation when they retire. They walked away from a promise on company tax rate. They walked away from 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. I am not advocating that, but this is another area where they walked away. They walked from a promise to build 12 submarines in South Australia and do a deal with the Japanese government to send them there. They are now sending 3,000 jobs over to Spain. These are only some of the broken promises. For Senator Macdonald to come here and talk about broken promises, I think he is on the wrong track when the coalition government talks about that. I can go on—broken promises on spending, tax, small government and doing cost-benefit analysis. They are all broken promises—broken promises on multinational tax-dodgers, broadband and the NBN and broken promises to young people on the six months on the dole.