Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the request of Senator Moore, I move:

We have seen an extraordinary first week of parliament for 2015, so I think it is appropriate that we do a summary of what has happened. The Australian people know that the Prime Minister has no vision for this country, and that has been demonstrated. What did he say? There has been a bad government for 520 days. On 9 February, my birthday, he said, 'Good government starts today.' Well, we have not seen any evidence of that thus far—it is only Thursday, and we know they are pretty slow off the mark.

This government's agenda is built on lies and broken promises. It is built on policies which are hurting low-income people—families, pensioners, students, job seekers and the homeless. If you fit into any of those categories, you are in the government's sights. That sums up this government's first budget: if you are marginalised in Australia, you will suffer under this Liberal government's agenda. The first Abbott-Hockey budget will go down in our country's history as a budget which tore away at the very fabric of what makes this country great—fairness. Fairness is what we as Australians stand for. We believe in giving people a helping hand up, not a handout.

But, since taking office, the Abbott government has launched an unprecedented attack on low- and middle-income Australians. And they are wondering why they do not have support from the Australian community. No wonder the Australian people no longer trust the Prime Minister to lead this country. It beggars belief. When you go to an election promising not to do X, Y and Z but, when you get into government, you do X, Y and Z, what do you think people are going to think? What do you think is going to happen? Your political capital has been used up. Tony Abbott's political capital has been used up. So it really does not matter whether those on the other side change the leader, choose a new prime minister, as I have said on more than one occasion this week. You can take Tony Abbott out of the Lodge, but you can never take the unfairness out of the Liberal Party.

Those opposite may not know what it is like to live from pay cheque to pay cheque, but there are millions of Australians who do. The majority of Australians live from pay cheque to pay cheque and they are hurting. I know personally of the hardship of having to depend on your pay cheque from pay to pay. I know personally what it is like to live on a disability pension. I know what it is like to get to the end of a fortnight and not have enough money to scrape together to buy a carton of milk for your children. I know what it is like. I do not talk the talk; I have actually walked the walk, and so have many others. So we have a better comprehension of what it means when they make these savage attacks on low- and middle-income families. We know what effect it is having when they change the indexation on pensioners. We know what effect that has on their daily living costs. We know what effect that is going to have when they try to go into an aged-care facility.

We know what it is like when you break your promise not to have any cuts to education. It is blatantly wrong that in the future, if the government gets its way, families will only be able to send their children to university if they can afford it, if their credit card is big enough. Otherwise, those young people are going to be burdened for decades because they cannot afford the fees. It is all very well for those on the other side to deny that there are going to be $100,000 degrees. But we know that, if you want a decent degree, that is what is going to happen. But those opposite are determined to take us down the American track. Anyone who has done any reading, anyone who watches the news, anyone who has been to the US understands what an expensive and disadvantaged society it is for low-income people and the poor. When it comes to education, that is the gateway to having a brighter future. So we should be investing more in education, not cutting it—not making it harder for those who want to go on to university, those who worked very hard to get the marks to go on to tertiary education.

And if those opposite really believed in education they would not be cutting funding to the TAFE system in this country. Going to the last election, those opposite y said that they would not cut funding to TAFE. But what did they do? They want to introduce a GP tax. GPs around the country are very hardworking, as we know, and no-one appreciates them more than I do. They are not usually politically motivated to go out and campaign against a Liberal government; they are more likely to come after our side. But what did those opposite do? They energised the GPs to mount a campaign. So it did not matter what surgery you went to, there were petitions there. When I went to see the doctor we spent the first half of the consultation talking about the gross neglect of health by those on the opposite side.

So what do we have now? We have someone who went to the last election as the Leader of the Opposition who had a really good reputation for saying no, no, no and being terribly negative. The only problem is that they have not been able to transition into government, and he has now lost the confidence of his own caucus. So the Australian people are now waiting in limbo to see when the axe will fall on Tony Abbott. It really does not matter whether it is Malcolm Turnbull or Julie Bishop who becomes the leader. Their DNA is all the same. They have all sat around the cabinet table and agreed to and supported the policy decisions they have taken and the budget they wanted to bring down in this country.

We on this side always stand up for fairness, equality and giving a helping hand to those who need it most. We know what the Treasurer would say when people like me talk about the poor and those who need a helping hand. What was the response of the Treasurer of this country when they put the fuel tax up? He said: 'Poor people don't drive cars.' Well, here is a news bulletin: they do actually drive cars. Pensioners drive cars and students trying to get an education drive cars. That statement is what those people on the other side believe is happening in our community. They are so out of touch. It is extraordinary that a Treasurer of a rich country like Australia would believe that poor people do not drive cars. Maybe he would prefer that they did not.

When they slug the pensioners, change the indexation and increase the fuel tax, they never consider the pensioners who are on such a limited income and who will have to pay more for public transport and for their heating costs. When we were in government—and it is something that I am very proud of—we gave the biggest increase in the country's history to the pensioners of our country, because we knew and recognised that they needed that. Did they need more? Is there more to be done? Of course there is, but those opposite—as usual—have slugged those who can least afford it.

Why should a family have to make a choice—that is, when they have got three or four kids, or a couple of kids, and mum and dad are sick—about who will be able to go the doctor? Then we had the unfortunate incidents where we had older Australians and pensioners concerned about—even when they did go to their doctor; if they could afford it and could find someone who would bulk-bill them—whether they would be able to afford to have their scripts filled. I had a pharmacist talking to me and relaying the concern that he had about people coming in and asking, 'Do I really need to take this medication every day? Can I just take it every other day, because I don't think I will be able to afford it?' That is outrageous. That is a blight on this government and it would be a blight on us in this place if we were to allow those things to happen.

I often talk about what is happening in my home state of Tasmania. Unfortunately, we have been doing it pretty tough over there. We do not have a really good record and, certainly, there is nothing that we can be proud of about the amount of young people who are going on to tertiary education. I know so many people—from when I went out to the University of Tasmania campus in Launceston and I spoke to the students out there—who were actually the first in their family to go on to university and have that opportunity. They said that many of them would not be able to afford to go with these changes. Why should those people with a disability who want to go on to tertiary education—to better themselves and to give themselves a brighter future—be denied the opportunity because of these changes? Why should mature-age students be disadvantaged and not be able to have that same opportunity?

The local member for the seat of Bass in my home state of Tasmania has stayed silent. He denies these things almost on a daily basis—particularly when I am in the media, I write a letter to an editor or, heaven forbid, someone else from the community questions this budget and the policies that this government has adopted and is trying to enforce onto the Australia community—and then he attacks those people who dared to raise these issues and challenge him on the direction that this government is trying to take the Australian community in.

History dictates, when it comes to the Liberals, that all Liberal governments are the same. If you go back through history, through the Howard years, through the Abbott years and further, they always have this in their DNA and they always have this on their radar: their attacks and their policies are always directed, in a negative sense, towards those who can least afford it. We know that their real friends are in the big end of town. But even the big end of town is not happy with them at the moment.

Just look at what pearl of wisdom those opposite have proposed from a public policy perspective on higher education: in an 'ideal' world, those opposite would have every student in Australia paying $100,000 or more to go to university. How out of touch are those opposite? As I have said on a number of occasions, why should prospective students and parents have to make a decision about whether all their children will be able to be afforded the opportunity to have a tertiary education or they will have to make a choice? Will we go back to the good old days, which I would say are the bad old days, of when it was usually the male who got the opportunity to go on and have an education?

Over the last 523 or 524 days, this country has been waiting for a good government to arrive. The Prime Minister of this country said on Monday that a good government was going to start and they had been a bad government up until now. We are waiting to see any evidence of a good government. Those on the other side will reflect on the former Labor government and talk about what a rabble we were, but those people have taken the cake. They are the champions of dysfunction, rabble and arrogance. They are a government of chaos and a government who are quite clearly out of touch with the Australian community. They are a government that have no direction, they have no vision and they have no policies.

You can talk about the effect of the promises that they took to the election: no cuts to education, no cuts to health and no changes to the pension. They said they would be a government of creating jobs, jobs and jobs. Well, we are seeing the numbers from today that demonstrate that, once again, they are a failure: unemployment has risen to 6.4 per cent, which is a 12-year high. This Liberal government has run business confidence into the ground. Businesses are not investing in capital, people are not investing in property and, if this government had its way, our young people would not be investing in their education.

On this side, we believe in a strong economy that delivers for all Australians and does not leave people behind. This government would divide people into the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots. That is not a country that I want to live in and I do not believe that is a type of country that Australians want to live in. Fairness, as I said before, is what makes us great. We are mates with each other and we stand together for each other. We on this side are going to stand together with those on the crossbench to ensure that this government does not get its way and that they do not implement these heartless policies and inflict more pain and hardship on the living standards of all Australians—let alone those who are the most disadvantaged in this country.

In my area of responsibility, aged care, when this government came in it had their own war, particularly concerning the dementia supplement for those with severe psychological and behavioural problems. It was not until I asked a question in February last year that it dawned on them that perhaps we ought to be keeping an eye on this expense. Then what did we see? We waited months and months for them to come up with a new policy for how we were going to help those people that are caring for those with the most severe behavioural problems. What we have now is a fly-in squadron of a policy and no-one knows how it is going to work, how the money is going to be used, what accountability there will be—but it is still not enough to help on a day to day basis those who are caring for some of the most vulnerable people in our community. It comes back to fairness—making sure that those who are the most vulnerable have the help that they need to. It is fairness by making sure that we have world's best practice when it comes to aged care—the Living Longer. Living Better package that we implemented when we were in government was a great step forward because we took with us the aged care sector. We had that support. There is still more work to be done. Now we have a new minister who has been put into this area of responsibility, and he has been put in there because they are trying to soften his image so that he has a better image when he rolls Joe Hockey and becomes the next Treasurer.

Those who believe in fairness in this country believe that there needs to be access to universal health care and education. We believe in a secure pension system. We believe we should support those people who have disabilities and those who have caring responsibilities, and those people who are looking for employment deserve the help they need to get back into the workforce. Let us not forget that those opposite are the ones who believe that if you are under 30 and cannot find a job you should go without any assistance for six months. What do they think those young people are going to do? What is that going to do to our community? We know what it is going to do—it is going to cause more mental health issues, it is going to lead to more crime in our communities and it is not going to lead to one new job or any assistance for those young people.

Let us be honest, not much is going the way of those opposite at the moment. If I were to summarise the last few weeks—or in fact the last 523 days—I would say that things have not really been going their way. But when things are not going your way you do not throw your toys out of the cot like they are doing at the moment. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Those opposite are now asking themselves what they do with Tony Abbott—they know the Australian people no longer trust them, they are not listening to them, so what do they do with him? Some have a short-term vision that Malcolm Turnbull or Julie Bishop is going to change the way the Australian people view this government. They will not, because the people know what Malcolm Turnbull was like when the was the previous leader. Those opposite know what he was like, but the backbench is desperate. They are blaming Tony Abbott, but they should be looking at themselves. They are not listening to the community; they are not out there listening to the people. If they were moving around the community, they would not be persisting with this harsh, heartless budget. That budget will not get through because those on this side and on the crossbench—those who have a social conscience—will not allow it to go through.

It is an indictment of this government that it has been built on lies—lie after lie after lie. We say, 'Bring on your new leader when you are ready, when you have a bit of guts, but in the meantime we are going to stand and defend fairness in this country.' We will always stand for fairness and we will always speak up for those who are the most vulnerable in this community. (Time expired)

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The motion we are debating reads:

That the Senate condemns the Abbott Government for its litany of broken promises which are hurting low- and middle-income earners, harming the economy, damaging business and consumer confidence, costing jobs, undermining fairness, and changing Australia for the worse.

The only thing I can say is what abject hypocrisy this motion demonstrates. Australia is not in the kind of condition that I know many of the people who voted for the coalition government in 2013 would have liked it to be in is not because of the actions of the coalition government but because of the vandalistic actions of those who sit opposite. One of the things that those opposite will fail to tell you is that when they came into government in 2007 they inherited a $60 billion surplus—there was $60 billion in the bank. That surplus was there so that the Australian public could be confident that when something needed to be done, when some major infrastructure project came along—

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

Like the GFC, or something like that?

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Exactly, so that when something like the GFC came along they would have some money in the bank and could put some investment back into the community. But, no, they did not do that—they basically went on a wasteful, unproductive spending spree for six years. I have no problem whatsoever with the injection of funds into productive endeavours but they injected money into the stimulus package so that people in Australia could go and buy foreign-built television sets and the like. The stimulation of that sort of retail spending really did not have any long-term benefit for the economy. It might have given a short-term sugar hit to the economy, but it did not deliver the long-term sustainable economic growth pattern that we needed to put our economy on an even keel. We got our sugar hit, but we got nothing afterwards. I am quite happy to accept that the $60 billion that was inherited by the Labor government in 2007 could have wisely been spent at a time like the GFC, because I think everybody accepts that it was a tough time for economies around the world, but we could have done so much more with that $60 billion than just throw it at pink batts and things like that.

The cold hard reality is that we basically inherited your problems. To sit here today and put a motion before the House to suggest that the Australian economy is not powering ahead because of actions of this government is absolutely ludicrous. I will just mention a few facts. As I mentioned, the Labor government converted the record surpluses of the Howard government into record deficits. Labor delivered around $2 billion worth of deficits, with $123 billion worth of deficits yet to come when they left office. They promised surpluses in 2012-2013 on over 500 separate occasions, and they did not deliver any of them. The budget legacy of Labor includes that the budget is unlikely to return to surplus within the next decade, unless of course the coalition government are allowed to put in place the budget repair measures that we took to the Australian people when we said, 'We are going to repair the budget.' I do not think anybody on the other side can doubt that we told the Australian public, as part of our promise to them when we went to the election, that we were going to repair the budget, that we were going to get the budget back into surplus and that we were going to deal with Australia's debt problem. I do not think anybody can doubt that. They can squawk all they like, but I do not think they can doubt that.

Basically, we have a situation where, unless we take action now, the debt of the Australian nation will rise to $667 billion within the next 10 years. Just to put that into some sort context, that is $25,000 for you, for Senator Conroy, for Senator Gallacher, for Senator Birmingham, for Senator Ryan, for the clerks and for the Hansard reporters. But it will not just be for them; for your children, for my children and for everybody's child in Australia, it will be $25,000 a day. What we need to remember in this place—and what we so often forget, and sometimes the media forget to portray it like this—is that this debt is actually not the debt of the government. This is the debt of the Australian people, because the Australian people, in a sense, own their government. If we do not address the issues that we have with our debt and deficit problem, and the expanding debt and deficit problem, all we are doing is knocking the problems of today on to our children in the future because we are outspending our means at the moment—so what we are saying is that it is okay for us to spend our kids' money.

The debt at the moment is already costing us billions of dollars in interest. I think it is about $14 billion in gross interest payments this year. That is $40 million a day. Think about what $40 million a day, or $14 billion a year, could build you. In my home state of South Australia—and Senator Gallacher will see this when we drive down North Terrace—the construction of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital is a $3 billion infrastructure project. Whether you do or you do not like where it is, it is going to be a fabulous piece of infrastructure for South Australians—$3 billion. With $14 billion of gross debt annually, we could build quite a number of hospitals; in fact, we could probably build a new hospital in every capital city.

Have a look at the amount of money that we spend on child care in a year. The debate has obviously been around productivity in dealing with the issue of child care and getting more of our mothers back into the workforce as quickly as possible. Imagine what $14 billion a year would be able to do in that space, not just in giving the opportunity for women and mothers to get back to work but also for the productivity that it could generate.

I think we need to contextualise the size of the problem that we are dealing with before we decide that we are going to condemn a government that is trying to deal with a legacy that I think is almost incomprehensible to the people of Australia. We often talk about small numbers—people can understand that—but once you get into these sorts of billions and we are talking about numbers the size of telephone numbers, people just cannot comprehend what this debt situation really means. To everybody who is listening, $25,000 has been stuck on your credit card because of the actions of the previous Labor government and the refusal of those opposite to allow us to address that problem.

There would have been no doubt by anybody in Australia that when we went to the election we told the people of Australia that we wanted to get rid of the carbon tax, we wanted to get rid of the mining tax, we wanted to stop the boats and we wanted to build the roads of the 21st century. I said it so many times that I almost got ready to scream myself for the amount of times I said it. The Australian public, and that includes those people who did not vote for us—the Labor voters, the Greens voters and those people who voted Independent—would all have known that that was the platform on which we sought to be the government of this country.

When we got into this place on the first sitting day after the election in 2013, you would have thought it was reasonable for those opposite to accept the fact that those particular things that we had very clear policy positions on, that we had a mandate to undertake, would have been allowed to pass in this place. In 2007, prior to defeating the Howard Liberal government, Labor went to the election and ran a very hard campaign on Work Choices. Despite the fact that the coalition had the numbers in the Senate after that election, we allowed the passage of the repeal of the legislation surrounding Work Choices because we believed that the people of Australia had spoken and had told us, when they voted us out of government and voted the Labor Party into government, that they did not want Work Choices. So Work Choices was dead, and we allowed it to go.

So what happened when we got into government in 2013? When we came into this place and sought to repeal the carbon tax—because that was the No. 1 message in our election campaign—those opposite said 'No;' they were not going to let us repeal the carbon tax; they were going to stop us. So we had to wait out the nine-month hiatus between being elected to government and the Senate changing over and the crossbenchers coming in, which then denied the Labor-Greens coalition their majority in this place, to be able to rid the Australian people of the burden of the carbon tax.

So it comes down to being a responsible government. And I accept that governments have to be responsible, but oppositions have to be responsible too. On the behaviour of this opposition—in cahoots with the Greens, who should know better because they have been here long enough—to the Labor Party in particular I say: you have got to be a responsible opposition too. And do not tell us that we are not listening to the people. You are not listening to the people. The people wanted the carbon tax gone. You would not let it go. It had to be the crossbenchers who did it.

It was the same thing with the mining tax. There was no doubt that we were going to remove the mining tax. But, once again, when we came into this place, we could not get rid of it until we had a change of composition in the Senate.

It was the same thing with the boats. The Greens were probably more to blame for this one, but you voted with them. We said that we wanted to put this suite of activities and actions in place to stop the boats. But, of course, no—the Greens had to block the temporary protection visa legislation and the package of initiatives that we needed to put through to stop the boats. And I might say: when we eventually got them through, the boats actually did stop.

But it is about being a responsible parliament. A responsible parliament includes having a responsible opposition as well as having a responsible government.

All of this notwithstanding, some positive things are happening at the moment out there—things like the signing of the free trade agreements with China, Korea and Japan, and, hopefully, the negotiation of the trade agreement with India this year. These have all been amazingly positive things. And you have only got to go out to rural and regional Australia to see what a difference they have made in our primary production sector, which will now have the opportunity, over the next few years, to access these amazing growing markets—markets in which, for the first time in a very long time, Australia actually has a distance advantage. In the past, our traditional markets were Europe and the US, so we were further away than those trading countries we were seeking to compete with. But we are quite a lot closer to Asia than to anywhere else, and it is a burgeoning area.

Congratulations to the minister—and nobody could not congratulate Minister Robb, and of course Minister Robb is part of this government—on being able to achieve, in such a short period of time, these three trade agreements, and hopefully this year the fourth trade agreement, which is going to be of massive benefit to all Australians but, obviously, most particularly to those in rural and regional areas.

Another thing that has been of terrific benefit has been the deregulation agenda that this government has been putting in place. We have sought to remove the unnecessary and burdensome red tape that costs businesses and people on a daily basis.

We said that we wanted to deregulate. If you went and did a vox pop down the street and asked people, 'Would you like to have all of the regulation and compliance burden that is put on you removed unless it has a positive purpose for being there? Would you like to see it gone?' then I am sure that everybody would say, 'That would be fine.' But, no, we are actually seeing—

Senator Conroy interjecting—

Ah, I see Senator Conroy is here in the chamber today—those opposite blocking the passage of our deregulation bill in relation to communications, so that the Do Not Call Register is put in jeopardy. I would just like to say: it would be really nice if we could just deal with some of these sensible things sensibly. There are obviously going to be a number of things that we disagree on, but it seems that we disagree on many things that we do not need to disagree on, and that seems to be one of them.

But let us have a look at some of the things that have been a little more positive. I admit that some of the positive economic indicators are only just starting to show. We have a long way to go.

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

Higher unemployment.

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But there are a number of things that are happening at the moment. There were 200,000 more jobs created last year. That is about 585 new jobs every day. So in 2014 jobs growth was more than triple the rate in 2013.

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

Unemployment went up!

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So you have got to remember what you are comparing some of these things to.

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

You've got to get some new speaking notes!

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And, to those opposite who are interjecting—and that may not be picked up by the transcript—I say, as I said at the start of this: a lot of the blame for this, or in fact the lion's share of the blame for this, and for any of the negativity in our economy at the moment, can be landed firmly at your feet, because you are not allowing this government to get on with its economic agenda, because every time we try to do anything you try and block it. You trashed the economy—

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

Liar, liar, pants on fire!

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Acting Deputy President, can I take a point of order in the middle of a speech?

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

Oh dear, oh dear! I withdraw.

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In concluding, to allow others to participate in the debate on this ludicrous motion, I will just say that, having spent six years trashing the economy, and then having spent the last 18 months refusing to allow us to fix up the economy, and having knowingly condemned future generations to paying for the excesses of this generation, I would be very interested to see whether anybody on the other side of this chamber, when they get up to speak—because I know a number of them are going to do so—has any constructive suggestions about how we are going to turn around the debt and deficit mess that we inherited from you, so that we actually can turn around the fortunes of this nation, so that we do not condemn our children and their children to a life of paying back the debt that we have racked up on their behalf because you opposite will not allow us to fix up our debt and deficit problem.

Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I start with a frank assessment of where we are as a nation, and I think it is important to look at some of the fundamentals here. Let us start with the economy and some of the key indicators in terms of how our economy is going. If we look at last year, we had a quarterly rate of economic growth of about one per cent. Then we had the budget, that infamous budget, and the economy took a massive hit. Economic growth halved, down to about 5.6 per cent; it dropped further, by about 0.3 per cent; and it is still on the way down. Economic growth is on the way down. It is falling, rather than rising.

Government Senator:

A government senator interjecting—

Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Do not listen to the huff and bluster that you hear in this place. Look at what the Reserve Bank say about the economic outlook. They say that growth is continuing at a below-trend pace. They say that domestic demand is weak. They say that, looking towards the future, it will be below trend for somewhat longer.

Look at unemployment. In 2012, the unemployment rate was about 5.3 per cent; in 2014, it was over six per cent. That is worse than it was at the peak of the global financial crisis. Again, do not take our word for it; look at what the Reserve Bank say. They expect unemployment to get worse before it gets better. And is not just unemployment. Underemployment has been a problem for a long time. Unemployment figures do not talk about levels of underemployment. But, again, underemployment is now getting worse.

I think it is important to be honest about the role that governments can play in shaping the direction of our economy. It is a very interconnected world, and we are very much subject to the global economic tides, the ebbs and flows, that go along with that. Since the Hawke and Keating reforms of the eighties and nineties, which produced many benefits, the levers that governments have at their disposal are limited. But the one thing that governments do have some control over, the one thing that governments can influence, is a very precious, intangible commodity: confidence. That is something that governments do shape. What we have now is a crisis of confidence. There is a crisis of confidence in this government, its people and its policies, and that starts at the Prime Minister and flows down. That is the heart of the problem for this government, and it started with the budget.

It is very clear that the crisis of confidence we are experiencing at the moment started with the budget, a budget that came as great shock to the Australian community. Despite the promises of no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no cuts to the ABC, we saw a budget that was an attack on the sick, the poor, the young and the old. It was a budget that tore up the social contract, a contract that was developed on the back of generations before us, based on the notion that we are an egalitarian country and that we look after people who are poorer than us and people who are unwell. It was a contract that said: 'This is who we are as a nation. This is what we stand for.' And the budget tore that up. It was a budget that fundamentally redefined who the Australian people were, and they did not like it. It was not just that they did not like it; they did not have confidence in the people who were telling us the direction that we needed to head in.

We had Joe Hockey trying to defend the budget, making ridiculous statements like 'poor people don't drive cars and, if they do, they don't go very far'. He said people work for the government for six months, implying that the ordinary rate of tax for an average Australian is 50 per cent. That is nonsense, utter nonsense. He made these absurd claims that people were going to live until they were 150 and that we needed to make these sorts of cuts because, if we did not, we were going to end up like Greece—comparing the Australian economy to that of Greece. That is the sort of language that leads to a crisis of confidence.

In health care, we saw the same thing. We saw a range of policies implemented based on a lie. We had a health minister saying that Medicare was unsustainable, in the face of all of the evidence saying the opposite. We had the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report saying that growth in spending on health was lower than it had been in the past 30 years. We saw Commonwealth spending on health as a proportion of GDP actually decline. The government came up with figures like 'a 100 per cent increase in Medicare', but they forget the fact that our GDP has increased by almost that much. These are some of the most basic and deliberate misrepresentations of how our health system is performing.

We have a good health system; we can make it better. But the government tried to implement a range of policies that attacked the very heart of our health system—that is, the principle of universality. You see, you can fund a health system in two ways. You can fund it through progressive tax so that, at the point of access, everybody is entitled to use it. That is why I have no problem with millionaires being bulk-billed. The alternative is the US model. You do not collect the tax revenue; you ask people to pay for it at the point of service. That results in a much less fair system and a much more expensive one. It is why the US spends twice what we do on health as a proportion of GDP.

I also say in the middle of this debate that what is being called 'the GP tax' is not a tax. Every time the Labor Party talk about this as a tax, they are undermining the very thing we should be doing, which is arguing for a fair tax take to fund these services. This is not a tax. It is a co-payment. It is a user-pays model and it dismantles the very core of what Medicare is, and that is a universal system of health insurance. Again, it was not just about the co-payment policy; it was about the way it was implemented. We had version 1, version 2 and then version 3, and today, I understand, version 4 is on the table but it is not on the table. Of two different members of the government, one is suggesting it is on again and the other that it is off again. I do not know—I genuinely do not know—whether the co-payment is still government policy. It is no wonder the former health minister has been voted the worst health minister of all time.

Education is no different. We have the spectre now of $100,000 degrees. We have a situation where universities do not know what to charge their students. I do not blame universities and their vice-chancellors for getting out there and arguing in support of some of these changes, and I know some of them are. It is because they are starved of funds. They want to get on and do their jobs, but we have a government that is not prepared to fund higher education. It is the brains of this country that our economic prosperity comes from. Why we would starve our universities of funding, why we would continue to argue for user-pays models in education that discriminate against the poorest and most vulnerable, and people living in regional areas, is beyond me.

In welfare we had the prospect of young kids being taken off Newstart after six months. How on earth is somebody who has no income support, who cannot find a job, who is in a regional community, who might have a chronic health problem and has to go and see their GP a couple of times a month supposed to survive?

The list goes on. We had the review of the renewable energy target, with the brazen, shameless appointment of a climate denier like Dick Warburton to review the renewable energy target. From a government that prides itself on supporting business we have uncertainty in a multibillion dollar business, a business that could be one of the powerhouses in driving our economy forward. Right now we have uncertainty in the renewable energy sector because we have a renewable energy target but both sides are not prepared to say, 'This is it. This is the level of certainty we need, and let's make sure that business knows where they're operating from.' We have had R&D slashed. We have had funding for the CSIRO slashed. We have had funding for the ABC slashed. We have had funding for SBS slashed. We have had public services slashed. And then we had the spectre of the paid parental leave that was, that wasn't, that was, that wasn't.

It is hard to go past the Prime Minister's role in all of this. It is a tough gig being the Prime Minister of a country. I would not wish it on my worst enemy. It is a tough gig, but it has to be said that he has been an international embarrassment. Do you remember him creating that new country Canadia? The suppository of all wisdom? Knights and dames? Then, today, I understand, he tried to compare job losses with the Holocaust. We have a Prime Minister who is showing himself to be unfit for office. People right around the country who have Rhodes scholarships must feel at the moment that the currency of their degree has been debased. It is no wonder that we have had the leadership turmoil we have seen over the past week.

What we are seeing is trust and integrity in government being destroyed. I have always believed that people might not agree with you on every policy proposition, but if they trust you, if they respect you, if they believe you have integrity you can take them with you. This is a government that has lost the trust of the Australian community. It has lost the trust of the Australian community because it promised one thing and did another. What it did was a fundamental attack on the values that we believe are important and that define us as a nation.

Amidst all that, we have a chaotic government. They are divided. They are dysfunctional. They have lost the trust of the Australian people. They can accept some responsibility and stop blaming the electorate for their problems. The electorate is not absent minded; they know very clearly how they feel about this government.

A few words of advice: stop attacking the social contract. People in this country value Medicare. They fought for it. They want it preserved. They want it built up, not torn down. That is what they want. They think it is important to have income support for people who are down on their luck. The last thing people want is a city filled with young people pushing shopping trolleys around because they cannot find a job, cannot find a house and have all their belongings with them while they look for crisis accommodation. We do not want to go down that path. We want to have an education system that ensures that someone from a regional community or a low-income background can afford to get a university degree and pull themselves out of the position they are in.

We value the ABC. We value SBS. We want our public broadcasters improved. We value the public sector. Public servants are our doctors, our nurses and our teachers. They are the people who help make this country function. Sure, address wasteful spending. We agree with you, there are some areas of waste that we can address. I have written to the Minister for Health and said, 'Let's have a conversation about health care and the areas where we can get better value for money.' Let us stop funding things that do not work. It is important to accept that there are areas where there is waste in the system, but you have to drop your ideological baggage. It is not just about spending. Be honest with the Australian community. We are a low-taxing country. People do not like paying tax—I accept that—but we are low-taxing country and the big end of town is not pulling its weight. It is not. Let us start with the enormous tax concessions in the mining industry. Why is it that people like Gina Rinehart get cheap fuel? Why do they get billion-dollar discounts on their fuel bills when ordinary people have to pay the full value of fuel excise? Let us drop the enormous subsidies that exist on fuel for the big end of town, in particular the mining industry. Look at superannuation and negative gearing. There are huge concessions enjoyed by high-income earners. While they enjoy those concessions we are asking people on low incomes to pay more to see a doctor and to pay more for an education, but if they cannot find a job they are not going to be looked after. That is not the sort of country we are. Let us tackle tax avoidance head on. Let us look at the enormous offshoring that goes on with big multinationals, who are creating elaborate tax avoidance schemes—some of them legal, some of them not. Just yesterday we had someone suggest that these are as bad as, if not worse than, the bottom-of-the-harbour tax avoidance schemes that we saw in the seventies and the eighties. The challenge for this country is to take on the big vested interests, to accept that we have a great country with a social contract that we all enjoy. The government ignores that at its peril, because on the trajectory they are on they will not make it to the end of this year.

Chris Ketter (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the motion before the chamber.

This week, we saw the Liberal Party go to war with itself, perhaps the last group of Australians it has not picked a fight with. They picked fights with pensioners, university students, unions, people needing to see a GP and even the ABC. And now they are turning their divisive politics inwards.

Under this government we have seen unfair policy after unfair policy being resoundingly rejected by the Australian public and also by the Senate. And yet the Liberals think that simply changing the spokesman will make Australians forget about the cruel and repeated attacks on the very fabric of our society that this government has undertaken during their 16-month reign. And let us not forget the complicit National Party in all of this, supporting the decline of rural health, the jacking up of petrol prices and the lack of any real plan for Northern Australia without so much as a peep. The Nationals: asleep on the job since Menzies.

The Liberal's unfair budget and their broken promises are hurting Australians by around $6,000 a year for the average family. And this is from a government which claims to be interested in lowering the cost of living. This government is so out of touch and so right wing in its views that it is little wonder that the public are not buying anything it is selling. The unbridled outrage from the community with regard to making Prince Philip a knight was remarkable to see.

But what gave the public anger momentum was that this decision encapsulated everything about this government to date: behind the times, out of touch, bowing to external interests and without consultation. That is what fired everyone up: it was the ultimate 'captain's call'.

And if the policies alone are not bad enough, it is the completely ad-hoc and flying-by-the seat-of-their-pants-way of governing that is angering the public and now, finally, the Liberal backbench. Before I go into detailing some of these examples of poor policy and backflips, I want to give a contrast to this cruel and bitter federal government. I would like to offer my congratulations to what in all likelihood will be a new Labor government in my home state of Queensland. What a campaign, and what a fantastic result for Queensland! Labor were outspent, outmanned and severely outnumbered against an arrogant LNP, that saw government as some sort of birthright and that saw office as a way to help their mates and to get square with their perceived enemies. The size of the groundswell of community support for a change in government surprised the LNP, who thought they could ignore their promises to the public and act in any way they pleased without consequence.

The Prime Minister clearly does not get it, when he describes the Victorian and Queensland election results as a 'fit of absent-mindedness' by voters. When all else fails, blame the public. So I congratulate Annastacia Palaszczuk—hopefully, soon-to-be Premier Palaszczuk—and look forward to dealing with a Queensland government that will genuinely have Queenslanders' best interests at its core.

Whilst I would love to congratulate each and every candidate, both successful and unsuccessful, time may prevent me from doing so. So I will congratulate those new Labor MPs in and around the north of Brisbane where my office is: Nikki Boyd in Pine Rivers, Shane King in Kallangur, Chris Whiting in Murrumba, Mark Ryan in Morayfield, Rick Williams in Pumicestone, Stirling Hinchliffe in Sandgate, Leanne Linard in Nudgee, former senator Mark Furner in Ferny Grove, Kate Jones in Ashgrove, Steven Miles in Mount Coot-tha and Grace Grace in Brisbane Central. I look forward to working with all of them to help bring back good governance in Queensland.

I just return now to the federal government and will look at some of the examples which have led to concerns and to this motion before the chamber. Firstly, let's deal with the intergenerational report. The intergenerational report must be released every five years; it is the law of the land. Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott have been too caught up in internal dysfunction and in trying to sell their unpopular and unfair budget to the point where the Treasurer is in breach of the very law his Liberal Party colleague Peter Costello created. What is Mr Hockey hiding in this report?

Let's look at the tax white paper. It is overdue. The failure of the Abbott government to pass their cruel budget has clearly demonstrated their inability to connect with the Australian people. How can the Australian people seriously trust the Abbott government on fair tax reform?

Let's look at the renewable energy target, the RET. The coalition's gamed review of the RET has led to investment in renewable energies leaving Australia's shores. This ideological crusade has permanently wounded our wind and solar industries in particular. When Germany is leaving Australia behind on solar power, you know there is a serious problem with this government's approach.

I refer to the ARENA report on solar energy of 2013, which noted:

Solar energy is a vast and largely untapped resource. Australia has the highest average solar radiation per square metre of any continent in the world.

And yet when we look at the international comparison, Germany leaves us for dead—as does the United States, Spain, China, the Republic of Korea, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada and Portugal.

Additionally, the coalition misled the Australian people in 2013 when they stated that they were not expecting to make any changes to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, ARENA. However, Tony Abbott's budget of lies and twisted priorities did exactly that, announcing that the ARENA would be abolished.

Let's look at workplace relations. Senator Abetz says that the coalition will not legislate to change penalty rates. But you cannot trust the Abbott government. They are already laying the groundwork via the Productivity Commission and are letting the more-loyal backbenchers off the leash with regard to penalty rates. Why can't they be upfront in their plans? One need only have a look at the news article of 5 September last year from the ABC, whose headline stated 'Liberal backbencher Alex Hawke calls for penalty rates to be cut …'. This article quoted Mr Hawke:

"If you change penalty rates now, in six to 12 months you'd start to see an impact of more small businesses taking on more young people," he said.

"Given that Sundays are no longer sacrosanct ... having to pay a 75 per cent loading [is] an old concept."

So that is their answer to jobs: cutting wages and conditions of workers. Of course, Mr Hawke's call flies in the face of the coalition's election promise to make no changes to penalty rates in this term of government, and this Productivity Commission inquiry is an opportunity to reintroduce Work Choices by a different name.

On the issue of privatisation, the Queensland election result clearly indicates that Queenslanders are opposed to asset sales. Yet the coalition's Asset Recycling Fund Bill is nothing but a bullying tactic to force states and territories to sell off their assets if they want to obtain Commonwealth funding for much-needed infrastructure. This is a sneaky way to impose their ideological agenda of blanket privatisation and reduced government services. As we saw in the Queensland election, an asset sale is an asset sale. You can try calling it a lease, Strong Choices or asset recycling, but in the end you cannot fool the public, particularly in the most decentralised state in the country, where regional communities often depend on vital government services to stay viable. I did not hear the Nationals standing up to their coalition partners on that issue either.

On the issue of the GP tax, before the 2013 election Tony Abbott made no mention of a GP tax. Yet, like all his other broken promises, his unfair budget imposed a $7 GP co-payment on Australian families just for seeing the doctor. Despite two backflips and the dumping of a minister, this government is still committed to taxing families more to see the doctor. Why won't they listen to Australians?

On the issue of paid parental leave, the Prime Minister's signature policy is in tatters. This was a policy he persistently promised to deliver yet has, like countless other promises, backflipped on. If the Prime Minister were serious about engaging in productivity gains he would reverse the government's cuts from child care of over $1 billion dollar that leave working families even worse off under this unfair, cruel budget.

On the issue of university deregulation, the Abbott government should stop its ideological attack on Australian universities. The twisted view that students should have to pay up to $100,000 for a degree will, quite literally, kill the hopes and dreams of thousands of potential students who will not be able to justify the higher cost of attending university. This government needs to scrap their plans to bring this policy back from the dead after the Senate killed it off last year.

On the issue of submarines, not due to the opinion of dozens of eminent defence experts and not due to the pleas of the South Australian government and local members but on the eve of a vote on his leadership the Prime Minister gave a promise for a tender process. I feel for Senator Edwards. He is trying to stand up for his state, and I can appreciate that. But the way this Prime Minister has played him is reprehensible. One the most important military procurements in our nation's history was put up for grabs to win a single vote in a leadership challenge. That is remarkable. I have visited the Collins class submarines at ASC in Adelaide and, unlike this government, I could not help but be impressed and incredibly proud of what we are capable of building in Australia. The experts are on board. The industry and the public are on board. It is time the government got on board.

On the issue of business confidence, confidence in the business community—the alleged base of the Liberals—has been hammered by the never-ending chopping and changing of reviews, policies and ministers that has been the Abbott government so far. So far this term, the Liberal playbook in any area seems to be: (1) promise moderate changes before the election; (2) commission a sham review; (3) use the sham review to propose policy that is infinitely more extreme than previously promised; (4) be genuinely surprised when the public does not support the new policy. For many policies you can also add in the optional fifth step: perform a half-backflip. But they manage to mess that up as well. The end result is that no-one knows where they stand, and no-one knows what on earth is going on. The end result is backbenchers announcing policy to the media based on promises from the Prime Minister, then being contradicted within minutes.

This government has changed its views and double-crossed itself so many times on so many issues that its head must be spinning. They go on about blaming the previous government for their own poor economic management, but I would suggest they have a look a step further back. Let's ask the IMF about their spending, and I quote from The Age here:

Australia's most needlessly wasteful spending took place under the John Howard-led Coalition government rather than under the Whitlam, Rudd or Gillard Labor governments, an international study has found.

The International Monetary Fund examined 200 years of government financial records across 55 leading economies.

It identifies only two periods of Australian "fiscal profligacy" in recent years, both during John Howard's term in office—in 2003 at the start of the mining boom and during his final years in office between 2005 and 2007.

The Rudd government's stimulus spending during the financial crisis doesn't rate as profligate because the measure makes allowance for spending needed to stabilise the economy.

We have heard that 'good government' has allegedly started this week. It must be a pretty slow starter because I am yet to see it.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am at a loss to understand why Senator Moore continues to give me these gifts. Yesterday, I thought that the gift of the MPI that she gave me was for my birthday, but I do not quite know why she has served it up again and given me the opportunity to share with the Australian people the absolute failure and the incompetence of the last Labor government. I take the opportunity to remark on Senator Ketter's comments with regard to Queensland, which is where, at the University of Queensland, I undertook my undergraduate studies. I will just check with a fine Queenslander, Senator O'Sullivan. Senator Ketter, in that era Queensland was debt free. As I recall, one of the proud claims of the then Queensland government was that all retail fuel prices throughout Queensland were exactly the same. It did not matter if it was Cairns, Mareeba or Brisbane, they were all the same. Today, you have an $89 billion debt.

Do remember when John Howard won government? He and Peter Costello inherited a $96 billion debt from the Labor government and Mr Keating. But that was shared at the time amongst about 18 or 19 million people. Today, that $89 billion, nearly $90 billion, debt is shared amongst four million Queenslanders. And that represents $22½ thousand of debt for every single person in that state. And do you know what? It has to be paid back. What was the Newman government able to do in terms of retiring debt? Not too much, but what it did do was retire a $6 billion deficit. That is the difference between what you get in each year and what you actually pay out in expenditure each year. They reduced it by more than two-thirds—from $6 billion down to $2.7 billion. So that is what we have in Queensland today. Good luck to the good people of Queensland, because all they are going to see is that $89 billion debt just go up and up and up. That $22½ thousand per person is going to go up, Senator O'Sullivan.

I would agree with Senator Ketter that we did make one mistake on coming into government in 2013. I will tell you what it was: we actually believed the outgoing Labor government. How stupid would you have to be to do so! But we believed in them that that year there was going to be an $18 billion deficit.

Senator Bilyk interjecting—

Do you know what it turned out to be? In case Senator Bilyk did not hear it, it was not $18 billion; it was $40 billion. A deficit, as we all know, is that shortfall between what you get in each year and what you give out each year. Over the six years of the Labor government, they managed to run up $200 billion of deficit, whilst they ran from a surplus and approached about $600 billion in debt. As we all know, that translates to $1 billion a month, $33 million a day. It is about $1½ million an hour that this country is borrowing overseas, not to repay the debt but just to repay the interest. And how often do many of us in this place reflect on where we need to have funds to spend in the welfare sector, to spend in the pension sector, to spend on child care, et cetera? But when you watch that $1,000 million a month just going offshore, that is the new teaching hospital every month, that is the two new primary schools every day, seven days a week, that we are losing because we are paying back Labor's debt. Yes, there was a mistake by the incoming government, and that was that we believed the figure of $18 billion.

Acting Deputy President Seselja, you know—and those of us who have run businesses throughout our lives know—that leadership is about responding to changing circumstances. What are the circumstances today? The Labor government enjoyed the best terms of trade in Australia's history. They inherited no debt, no deficit. They inherited about $40 billion that was earning about $5 billion a year interest that was actually going into programs, et cetera—absolutely incredible. But we went to an election and we made a few promises. The first one was that we would get rid of the regressive carbon tax, because the carbon tax was simply putting the foot on the hose of industry, jobs and businesses. It was sending industry offshore; it was costing more for energy.

When young people come to my office and they want you to do this and do that, I say to them, 'In a population of 23 million in a land mass the size of continental USA, why do you think we have one of the highest per capita incomes in the world?' And they say, 'We lived on the sheep's back.' Well, it is a long, long time ago that we got a pound per pound of wool. Then they say, 'It's gold.' No, it is not gold. 'It's Iron ore.' We have probably had iron ore for six, seven, eight, nine or 10 years. Eventually, they cannot answer the question, so I say to them: 'Do you know why we are such a wealthy country per capita? It's because of cheap energy.' That has been it—nothing else, nothing more. We do not have the population. We do not have the population of the United States. We do not have the population of China and the other Asian countries. We have got—or did have—cheap energy.

So what did the carbon tax do? It attacked Australia's one great advantage. So we said we would reverse it, and we did. Who was the mining tax going to affect? Mainly, of course, Western Australia. That did not worry Labor, because they have so little representation in Western Australia. Even good Senator Bullock, before he came into this place, and others at the time, said, 'Don't do this.' We stood up here day after day and said, 'You will not bring in a mining tax, because it will make no money.' Did the then Labor government listen? No. What did they do? They not only made a prediction that they were going to earn $4½ billion a year when we told them it would earn them nothing. But, do you know what good old Mr Swan—that responsible and that best Treasurer in the world—went out and did? He spent it! Could you imagine a household getting the hope or the promise of $4,500 or a business getting $45,000, and at the beginning of the financial year saying, 'You beauty, I am going to go out and spend the $45,000 or the $4,500, or whatever it is.' Would any responsible household or business do that? Of course it would not. Mr Swan did. He made all these promises. He said, 'We're going to increase superannuation, we're going to change every circumstance, we're going to make all these concessions for everyone.' He built up expectations and hopes. And what happened when he earned nothing from his mining tax? Of course, they were dashed. And so we quite rightly committed them to the dustbin.

Today we have had discussions about the shocking circumstance of the number of people who came here illegally on boats. I will make only one comment about that. We speak about the 1,200 people lost at sea. I spent some time last year with two of my Senate colleagues undertaking the Sovereign Borders program up in Darwin at the Larrakeyah Barracks. I remember one morning speaking to some of the naval personnel who had in fact been at sea during those horrific circumstances. I asked them, 'How real is the figure of 1,200 lost at sea?' One of them said to me, 'Senator Back, the 1,200 were the ones that we pulled out of the water. The number is unknown, but it is infinitely greater than that 1,200.' I will not reflect further at this time on that circumstance.

But I will go on and say that, when Mr Abbott as the Prime Minister was confronted with the opportunity of providing financial support to SPC Ardmona, he said, 'No. Industry and business have got to learn to stand on their own two feet.' I would just make this observation. Do you know when the start of the demise of SPC Ardmona was? It is important to put this on the record. It actually started during the fruit harvest some years earlier at SPC Ardmona when a then industrial official went to the company right in the middle of picking and harvesting and influenced its workers to threaten to strike and arranged a circumstance in which the conditions of employment became such that the company became absolutely uneconomical and unprofitable. Do you know who that then union official was? It was one William Shorten, the now leader of the federal opposition here in this place. So we cannot divorce industrial activities from this but I, for one, will always do my best to encourage employment. I have a long record of encouraging employment, opportunity and skills development for those who have worked or are working with me or for me.

I will also go to some of the issues we are facing. Why are we looking at some of the budget problems we are? It is because the then Labor government identified $5 billion of savings that we supported once we came into government in this place. But what have that group of people on the other side done? They have opposed them. They have opposed their own budget savings.

I will go to higher education. It is a shame that Senator Carr is not here. Senator Carr knows as well as I do, despite his ranting and ravings, that it was the Labor Party's intention to cut some $6 billion out of higher education. In fact, by April 2013 they had started that process. I do not think it is to the credit of Labor senators to talk about $100,000 degrees. Let me give you one example. The University of Western Australia is among the top 100 universities in the world. Paul Johnson, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Australia and an honest, ethical man, has said that the cost of undergraduate degrees at UWA will be $16,000 per annum. A three-year education degree will be three times $16,000, which is $48,000, not $100,000. A four-year agriculture degree will cost four times $16,000, which is $64,000. Perhaps Senator Carr needs to go back to school or borrow a calculator. For heaven's sake, do not insult the intelligence of this place by going on about $100,000 degrees when that university alone, one of the top universities in the world, has said what degrees will really cost. Either that or bring Professor Johnson in here and call him a liar to his face.

Those higher education opportunities will particularly enhance the opportunity for low socioeconomic Australians to avail themselves of scholarship schemes to go to university without fees. Regional universities are now being denied Commonwealth supported places for sub-university programs which will then lead students on towards university degrees. They are being denied them completely. I cannot understand why or how that circumstance is occurring.

Senator Ketter drew attention to jobs, as did Senator Moore. The government is costing jobs, is it? The job advertisement level, according to the ANZ, is growing at 13.6 per cent per annum at the moment—the fastest growth in 3.5 years. Two hundred thousand jobs have been created, equating to just under 600 jobs a day. In 2014 jobs growth was more than triple that of 2013. Is this evidence of costing jobs? These are not coalition figures; these are from the ANZ. The Dun and Bradstreet business expectations survey says it is the best outlook for 10 years.

Bill Evans, the chief economist at Westpac, made this observation the other day in response to the Reserve Bank's decision. He said, 'This lift in confidence should allay any concerns that rate cuts in the current environment of record low rates can be a negative for confidence.' I have a lot of faith in Bill Evans. I have followed him for a long time. I believe that he knows what he is talking about.

If Senator Moore thinks consumer confidence is down she should know that retail trade is up 4.1 per cent higher than last year. We will be introducing a small business tax cut of 1.5 per cent. The ANZ consumer confidence index is at its long-term average. We saw in 2014 a 10 per cent increase in the number of companies registered. These are what will go out and employ people. There are 21,000 new companies, and that does not take account of sole traders, partnerships or other business activities. Senator Whish-Wilson quite rightly said today that small business is the engine room of this country. It is where there is and will be employment.

I have already spoken about the fuel industry and electricity costs. We know that electricity costs are down. We know that fuel costs are down. For how long they will be I do not know. I would not be banking on it, but at least they are down at the moment. These are taking pressures off everybody in the economy.

But I am particularly concerned about and interested in employment prospects. We have at the moment in the hospitality and tourism industry an urgent need for 85,000 to 90,000 jobs to be filled. There is an urgent need now. That is before we get to the ongoing onslaught of new inbound tourists as our Australian dollar goes down. There is $4 billion of value to us in the China-Australia free trade agreement from education related services and exports. There was $1.7 billion last year of revenue to this country just from tourism from China. We have 85,000 to 90,000 jobs in that one sector alone. In the sector which I am very interested in and, of course, passionately associated with, agriculture and agribusiness, the opportunities for our country are vast. Like tourism and hospitality, as Senator Nash knows only too well, many of those jobs are in rural and regional areas. Many of them are jobs that do not require a high degree of skills, but there is the opportunity for skills development.

If only the Labor opposition would stop the negativism. If only they would come in here and act as adults and help in the whole process of improving the economy, of creating jobs and of stimulating activity, the whole of this Australian economy and all of its people would be an awful lot better off.

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

It is not often I get the opportunity to follow Senator Back in a debate. I am very pleased to be able to do that today. Listening to Senator Back thrash around, regurgitating the same old rhetoric that the Australian public have rejected, is just pathetic—absolutely pathetic.

Let us go to one of the issues that Senator Back raised: the issue of jobs. The key players on jobs are the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and what have they said today about this incompetent, arrogant, unreal government? One hundred thousand more Australians are unemployed since the last election—100,000 jobs gone under the watch of Prime Minister Abbott and the rabble that he presides over. It is really is an issue where the only job that the Prime Minister cares about is his own job. The unemployment rate is the highest it has been since 2002. We had Senator Ruston in here earlier, and Senator Back, waffling on about what great economic managers they are and what a problem they inherited, and they have been demonstrated today again to be economic incompetents and to be absolutely incapable of dealing with the issue of employment growth in this country. There has been a 1.1 per cent spike in youth unemployment under the watch of the coalition government. This is the same government that wants to make sure that unemployed youth do not get access to any government support for six months. What is wrong with this government?

In South Australia, where this government basically told the car industry to go away—'Go and find an investment somewhere else'—and get out of the country, we now have this big jump in unemployment. It has the highest unemployment in the country, at 7.3 per cent, and that is before the car industry job losses hit South Australia. It is at 7.3 per cent now, and the car industry losses are to go on top of that. There has been a deal done with the Spanish government to build the submarines in Spain, and that will mean more job losses in South Australia. This government does not care about jobs. All the leadership of this government care about is their own jobs—that is all they care about.

Look at the pathetic performance we have had in South Australia. Senator Edwards was dragged kicking and screaming to stand up publicly for jobs in South Australia. We never heard a peep out of him when Senator Johnston, the former defence minister, said that South Australians could not build a canoe. There was not a peep out of any South Australian senator—not a word. They just copped this diminution of the reputation of South Australian workers, and they did it without a peep—not a mention of that issue.

Then, suddenly, the South Australian senators understand they have a political time bomb ticking away underneath them and that this is not acceptable. On top of destroying the car industry, the coalition are destroying the submarine and shipbuilding industry. That political time bomb ticks away and what does Senator Edwards do? He has an epiphany. He suddenly recognises that there are jobs on the line in South Australia, an area with high unemployment, the highest unemployment in the country, with the government not caring about South Australian workers. So he actually does the right thing and he starts standing up for South Australian workers. But then he does a deal with the Prime Minister that he would provide his vote to the Prime Minister in return for an open, competitive tender. The Prime Minister gives him that commitment. Senator Edwards goes out the next day, parades himself as being a great hero in South Australia and says, 'I've delivered a competitive tender for South Australian industry. Look how good I am.'

As soon as he got the words out of his mouth, he was being hammered into the ground. I feel sorry for Senator Edwards—I really do feel sorry—because at least he did the right thing in the end. He was doing it belatedly, but he got there and he eventually did the right thing. He traded his vote for the promise in return of trying to help employment in South Australia. The competitive tender did not last too long. It became an 'open evaluation process', or whatever it is being called—something that nobody knows what it means or what it is about. Then it became an 'opportunity to participate'.

Senator Edwards tried to go out and defend himself in the media—not very successfully, I do not think anyone would argue—but then he was humiliated again by South Australian frontbencher Mr Jamie Briggs, who came out and basically accused Senator Edwards of lying. In all my watching of politics in this country, I have never heard a government minister accusing a fellow member of their party of lying. This is something new in politics and it shows you exactly the problem we have with an incompetent government that is only interested in maintaining jobs, maintaining the perks of office, and is not prepared to look after the workers in this country. So I really feel sorry for Senator Edwards. His reputation is now that of someone who has lied. That is the reputation Senator Edwards has. And it has not been brought about by the Labor Party—because we do not believe he did lie. It has not been brought about by his political opponents on this side, it has been brought about by his political enemies on the other side. Senator Edwards is a much diminished figure after this fiasco. He does not deserve to be treated like that because, eventually, he stood up for jobs in South Australia. Senator Edwards, in my view, should continue to defend his reputation before it is gone forever. Senator Edwards, for all his faults, for all his ideological incompetence, for all his economic incompetence, tried to do the right thing and has been absolutely buried by his own side.

This is something I have never seen before. What is he trying to do? He is trying to do what the Economic Development Board in South Australia is that right thing, and that is to build the submarines in South Australia. The Economic Development Board in South Australia have said that Australia would be around $525 million a year better-off if the submarines are built in Australia—a half a billion dollars a year benefit to this economy by building the submarines in Australia—and 3,000 more Australian jobs will be saved every year over the 40-year life of the project if the submarine is built in Australia. These are massive figures, massive amounts of jobs, and I am glad Senator Edwards belatedly come to the view that he should stand up and fight on that position.

The unemployment rate is only one aspect of the failure of this government. The biggest failure of this government is a failure of trust and a failure of credibility. You see, no-one trusts this government. It does not matter whether it is Senator Ruston, Senator Back or Senator Cormann who gets up and runs the same rhetoric that has been run by this government since it came into power, people have stopped listening. And do you know why? It is because they do not trust you. You cannot lie continually to the Australian public and get away with it unscathed. I remember clearly when, on the night before the 2013 election, Tony Abbott, then Leader of the Opposition, went to the Penrith football club and said there would be no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS. Well, not one of those commitments has been kept.

Attacking the ABC, one of the most respected organisations in this country, is, I think, a bit low. The ABC is clearly an independent organisation that is delivering what the Australian public expect—a news service that can be respected and is independent. I have heard Senator O'Sullivan attack the ABC. I have heard him say that was one of the good things the government has done. Senator O'Sullivan, I do not think the constituents out in rural and regional Australia really think that is a good thing to do. I think your constituents actually believe that the ABC provides a good service to the community and that it is worth paying for.

I think your constituents need a National Party that is going to stand up for their needs out in rural and regional Australia—not a National Party that simply does the bidding of the Liberal Party, is a pale imitation of what the National Party used to be and is not prepared to stand up for rural and regional Australia on health, education and welfare. The National Party are so pathetic. They are not prepared to stand up for their own constituency, and that is why the voters in rural and regional Australia are looking for alternatives to the National Party. That is why we are seeing Liberals and independents getting elected in rural and regional Australia. The Nationals have abandoned the needs of rural and regional Australia.

Where are people depending more on jobs? In rural and regional Australia. They need jobs in rural and regional Australia. Where are people who are on welfare? The majority, or a lot of them, are in rural and regional Australia. What is the National Party sitting back and letting the Liberal Party do? Cut $80 a week over 10 years out of the pensions. Have you actually gone out and told the constituents of rural and regional Australia that you are sitting back dumb, sitting back and say nothing, when the pensions will be reduced by $80 a week over a 10-year period? I do not think so.

There are many unemployed 23-year-olds in rural and regional Australia. They are being cut $50 a week, which is 18 per cent of the income. There is nothing fair about that. That is why the Australian public have said that the budget that this government delivered is one of the most unfair budgets this country has ever seen. A single parent with an eight-year-old child will lose $60 a week, which is a 12 per cent cut in their income. Where is the fairness in that? It is just not there. For families on $65,000 a year, their income will be cut $6,000 a year.

That is why the coalition have lost the confidence and the trust of the Australian people. That is because you have acted on ideology and not the interests of the Australian public. You come in here and you mouth the same rhetoric, day after day, hoping it will see you through. The robotic rhetoric of Senator Cormann is not cutting through. You have got a Treasurer who is not cutting through. You have got a Prime Minister who is totally incompetent and does not even have the confidence of a massive amount of his backbench.

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What nonsense!

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

Senator O'Sullivan says, 'What nonsense.' This shows you that these people are just defying reality. They just do not accept reality. It was not the Labor Party who had the vote in your party room and it was not the Labor Party that was rebelling; it was your own backbench that was rebelling, because they are now listening to the Australian public and the Australian public are saying that your budget was unfair, you have not done the right thing and you cannot be trusted. You cannot be trusted and that is why you are in the position that you are in, where your party room is falling apart and where your Prime Minister is on a day-to-day probation. If there is another mistake, you are gone and the Malcolm Turnbull minions are in control. That is the problem you have got. You took the schoolkids bonus away, you cut $36 billion out of education and you cut $80 billion out of health—no wonder the Australian public look at you guys askance.

It is not only the Australian public. You have got the Council on Foreign Relations, who promote themselves as supporting globalisation, free trade, reducing financial regulation on transnational corporations and economic consolidation into regional blocks—on it goes. It is a right-wing organisation. What does one of their experts say in the Council of Foreign Relations' journal? They say:

Is Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott the most incompetent leader of any industrialized democracy?

I can answer that question very easily: yes. They say:

There are world leaders who appear dangerously unhinged, making policy based on whims, advice from a tiny handful of advisers, or some other highly unscientific formula.

They name a few of those leaders, such as Korea's Kim Jong-un and Russia's Vladimir Putin. They say:

But none of these leaders run a rich and powerful democracy… Tony Abbott, however, is in charge of a regional power, a country that is the twelfth largest economy in the world and the only rich world nation to have survived the 2008-9 financial crisis unscathed.

That was thanks to the Labor Party.

Yet in less than two years as prime minister, Abbott has proven shockingly incompetent, which is why other leaders within his ruling coalition, following a set of defeats in state elections, may now scheme to unseat him. They should: Abbott has proven so incapable of clear policy thinking, so unwilling to consult with even his own ministers and advisers, and so poor at communicating that he has to go.

That is only the start of the analysis from the right-wing think tank. The coalition are in political trouble and economic trouble. They will not survive because they are unfair and untrustworthy and have lied their way into power. (Time expired)

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank Senator Cameron for his contributions. I heard his contributions yesterday and he again said that somehow it was a bad thing that we were ideologically based. I have got to say to him, again: absolutely, we are. We are based in sound philosophies. Despite the absolute mess you left us, we have taken responsibility for dealing with it. You have adopted a year zero approach: what debt, what issues and what problems? We clearly have a very different perspective on success.

Our economy is growing at 2.7 per cent. The best you achieved is 1.9 per cent. Last year, we did create 213,000 jobs and 223,000 new companies, which are all employing Australians. Retail trade figures are up for seven months in a row. We have scrapped the carbon tax, which is at a tangible benefit of $550 per family. Wonderfully for our states, we have scrapped that ridiculous mining tax that you spent against where you never raised any money. We have got $50 billion in infrastructure packages to create new wealth and new jobs. We have 85 projects underway already in 18 months with another 94 underway.

We have made a decision on the new Western Sydney airport. After 10 years of discussion—in which you did nothing—for our free-trade agreement, we have now got three free-trade agreements, which represents over 50 per cent of our exports. We have got $1 trillion in new environmental approvals. Again, they are to create the jobs of the future. We have cut $2 billion in red tape, which was strangling our small businesses. We are putting in place the long-term structural reforms to fix your budget mess. We have stopped the boats. To me, that is success in 18 months.

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for the debate has expired.