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

He is about political survival. He is about—hopefully, from his point of view—creating a set of conditions where Australians will not be reminded again of his broken promise next year, short of the election. The only people who do not matter in this are the Australian people. The only people who do not matter in this are the people paying the mortgages.

Did we see the Prime Minister stand up and say, ‘We have the second highest interest rates in the industrialised world, Reserve Bank—don’t act any further’? Did we hear the Prime Minister stand up and say, as the Treasurer has been saying, ‘We’re going backwards in growth terms’? He says that is because of the drought, but he also now appears to think it is because Australians are saving more. Did we hear any of that constraint from the Prime Minister? No, no. We heard the Prime Minister’s pure political calculation: ‘Raise them now, fellas. Raise them now. Get this monkey off my back before Christmas. Do it under the cover of the Melbourne Cup but get on with it.’ ‘Slug them,’ is what the Prime Minister said to the Reserve Bank. So we have this one-two punch now in operation—a whack from the Prime Minister with a clear signal to the Reserve Bank: ‘Don’t worry about my promises and undertakings on historical lows. Rack them up and make sure things are okay politically next year. And then there is the second punch, which we’ll also conceal.’ This will be a rabbit-killer from behind, and that is what happens with the industrial relations laws.

If this government were honestly proud of what it was doing in the industrial relations laws, if it believed that these AWAs were about bringing conditions up as opposed to putting them down, it would be proud of the statistics that it could produce. There is only one reason to conceal these AWAs, and it is not the truth. The reason to conceal these AWAs is to protect the political position of the government. We are going to fight this government right the way down to the line to the next election. The Australian people understand this is no longer the government of Middle Australia; this is a government of deceit and for the big end of town. It is the Labor Party now that stands for Middle Australia, the Labor Party with their future our concern. (Time expired)

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