Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

This government cannot manage the economy in the interests of ordinary working Australians—Middle Australia—effectively anymore. This government cannot manage the economy in the interests of Middle Australia anymore, and that was absolutely eminently evidenced by the way in which the Prime Minister and the Treasurer conducted themselves in this place in question time. This government has failed to protect hardworking Australians from the consequences of rising interest rates and from the consequences of skyrocketing petrol prices. It has failed to keep interest rates at what it promised in the last election campaign would be record lows. It has failed to do that by failing to keep inflation under control. It has been crying crocodile tears over petrol over the course of the last 18 months and has been doing absolutely nothing about it, instead denying that you can do anything and absolutely refusing to exercise the authority that is in its hands to ensure that petrol prices are properly monitored in this country—by both the oil companies and the retailers having the firm hand of the ACCC riding them at this very difficult time—and absolutely refusing to contemplate alternative fuels to protect us in the long term from our excessive dependence on Middle East oil.

The government is terminally out of touch. The government is terminally arrogant. The relationship between the Prime Minister and the Treasurer is terminal too. What they have said about each other over the course of the last four weeks cannot be suppressed. One described the other as being guilty of hubris and the other described the accuser as being a liar. The combination of those two positions, whilst we absolutely agree that they have correctly characterised each other, is small comfort to ordinary Australians, who wish to be assured that they have a government that is devoted to their interests and not to the interests of each other in the government. In fact, for a considerable period of time now the concerns, the fears, the hopes and the opportunities of Middle Australians have been the furthest thing from the Prime Minister’s mind and the Treasurer’s mind.

I doubt whether they were ever there in the Treasurer’s mind, but the Prime Minister at least some years ago attempted to effect a concern for what was happening to Middle Australia. Everywhere I go—and I have been many places around this country in the course of the last six weeks—if I am told once, I am told 10 times, as I meet people in shopping centres, at coffee mornings, in airports and in the highways and byways of this nation, that the Prime Minister has changed. What they mean about the Prime Minister changing is that they once thought the Prime Minister was on their side; now they think the Prime Minister is on the side of the big end of town and is no longer concerned about them. As some evidence of this, he permits his parliamentary secretary, without rebuke, to go around describing the sorts of people who are complaining about the circumstances in which they now find themselves, the circumstances which are leading to this judgement about the character of the Prime Minister, as guilty of overdramatisation. That is what Mr Turnbull said of constituents such as the lady whom we referred to in the course of question time, Debbie Bridgman. He described the remarks she made as overdramatisation.

Let me read them again because this is the authentic voice of Western Sydney, of Middle Australia and of those now experiencing considerable difficulties in handling their mortgages. This is what she said in reference to what was said by the Liberal Party during the last election campaign:

When someone says that—

and by ‘that’ she meant keep interest rates at record lows—

you put your trust in them and feel a certain level of security. We started plans [for the extension] a year and a half ago, knowing we could afford to do that without expecting interest rates to continue to rise.

Ordinary people in this country are not tricky, they are not dodgy and they are not used to dealing day by day with weasel words. They are used to dealing with each other in their family situations and in their social relationships with integrity. They are not there for the smart political point; they are there to make personal judgements about the things they need to do in their lives that will enhance their families, increase their opportunities and ensure their security. They actually weigh the words of politicians in ways that we in this chamber never would. We in this chamber who are participants in the day-to-day political process are highly sceptical of each other. The public is not. The public in fact places a very high value on what is said to them by senior figures in this country and undertakings that they get at election time. When they see things like ‘keep interest rates at record lows’, they not only vote for people they believe will do that but also act on the assumption that when they said those things to them they were telling the truth.

This government has got form in this regard. Many people have borrowed up to their eyeballs over the last couple of years on the basis of these sorts of statements which still sit on the Liberal Party website. ‘Keep interest rates at record lows’ sits, as we speak, on the Liberal Party website. They have taken decisions based on that to mortgage themselves to the eyeballs in confident expectation they can calculate the future. The simple fact of the matter is that they cannot. The government has form. It did that with the privatisation of Telstra. T2 will live in infamy in the way ministers went about the place selling Telstra 2 as a massive opportunity, encouraging people into it, bidding up the price to blazes. And haven’t the mums and dads who followed government advice on that occasion suffered from that? They are now suffering from following the advice of the Prime Minister on this.

I could not believe what happened when we asked the question in this place about the blatant Liberal Party advertising. If this darned advertisement appeared once, it appeared 1,000 times around this country and still sits proudly on the website. What did the Prime Minister do? He was not apologetic at that stage. He became apologetic subsequently when he used the words he did about the actions of the Reserve Bank. But at that point the Prime Minister said, ‘I went to Mr Mitchell and made a comment to Mr Mitchell.’ The look of cunning on the Prime Minister’s face did not fool us. The cunning grin on the Prime Minister’s face was directed at Middle Australia.

Let me tell the House what Mr Mitchell had to say about what he thought his conversations with the Prime Minister amounted to during the election campaign, because I think it bears some repeating here:

I would accept the mean and tricky bit, and the dodgy language, but I chased him around and around in circles, time after time again before the election saying “would you guarantee to keep interest rates at this rate or lower” and he said no. Well, he didn’t say, no but he said exactly that answer that Robert’s making the point about and it is dodgy language but it’s political language and you both do it I’m sure. He said “I will do better than Latham”, “I will keep them lower than Latham” and time and time again I tried to get him to say otherwise and he wouldn’t. So I’d say he hasn’t lied, but he’s been dodgy.

Fair dinkum. Debbie Bridgman, confronting his dodginess, is now experiencing extreme financial difficulty which the Prime Minister’s parliamentary secretary says is somewhat overdramatised. I suppose you do get rather dramatic if you think your family is going broke. I suppose you do get a bit overdramatic if it means that you think that you can no longer afford private health insurance. I suppose you do get a bit overdramatic if you think that there is a question mark over whether or not you can pay your bills at the private school you want to send your kid to. I suppose you do get a bit overdramatic if you think that the logical consequence of all of this is that the bank might call in your mortgage. You might get pretty dramatic when that is the circumstance you confront—a circumstance that will never be confronted by the member for Wentworth and the Prime Minister or any of his chortling, hooning members, that gibbering array of pathological exhibits that sit on the front bench opposite us, because frankly—

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