Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Twelve years ago an opposition leader came into this parliament and made the case in an eloquent speech for a change of government. That was John Howard’s ‘five minutes of economic sunshine’ speech. It was a speech that went right to the heart of the credibility of the Keating government and the fact that the Australian people had lost confidence in them, and it struck right at the heart of the economic management of the Keating government.

Sadly, I do not think many of us who heard the speech from the Leader of the Opposition today will remember it next week, let alone in 12 years time. There was minimal mention of how Labor would manage the economy better than the government. It seems that, when it comes to management of the economy, the ALP cannot fault the government. It seems that on management of the economy and national security, the two foundations on which any Australian government must rest, the Labor Party have failed to make any case for how they would improve things for the welfare of the Australian people.

We have heard a bit about how Labor have decided on a new approach, to actually engage in the economic debate, and there are a whole lot of buzzwords: ‘investment’, ‘productivity’, ‘a turbocharged economy’. But at the centre of it there is one problem meaning the Labor Party can never be the better managers of the economy in Australia, and that is the trade union movement. It is almost paradoxical that, as membership of trade unions has declined in the workforce so that only about 20 per cent of the workforce hold a union ticket and about 16 per cent of the workforce in the private sector hold a union membership, the stranglehold of the trade union movement has become stronger over the parliamentary Labor Party.

I guarantee we will not hear a lot over the next eight or nine months from the Labor Party on the position of the Australian Education Union, for example, on values in schools, on reporting and on having literacy and numeracy standards. I guarantee we will not hear a lot about the approach the Nursing Federation take on health policy. But have no doubt that in the background these will be critical considerations for the Labor Party and the way they address policy.

You only have to look at the government’s Work Choices policy. Anyone who knows the most basic thing about economics knows that one of the ways of unlocking labour productivity is to have increased flexibility in the workplace. Labor even came to this realisation when they were last in government and they moved partly this way, but they could not go the whole way because the ACTU and the trade union movement prevented it. When the Labor Party talk about productivity, there is one aspect of productivity that they cannot address, and that is the labour market and flexibility. What we have seen with Work Choices, contrary to what was stated, has been higher pay, more jobs and fewer strikes—exactly the opposite of what the Labor Party said.

Looking at the Australian economy today, unemployment is at 4.6 per cent. It is the lowest level since November 1976. We had low inflation in the most recent quarter. We have an economy which has been growing for 16 years. We have seen wages increase by 17.9 per cent in real terms since the Howard government was elected in March 1996. We have seen interest rates much lower. You can pick any one of the interest rates that operated while the Labor Party were in—interest rates now are lower than the 10 per cent they were when they left government, lower than the 12.75 per cent average over their 13 years in power and lower than the peak 17 per cent home mortgage rate which was reached when Paul Keating was last Treasurer.

Most of the case by the Leader of the Opposition for a change of government was based on climate change and water. No fair-minded person could say that the government does not have a strong plan on climate change. We have spent $2 billion on measures which have reduced greenhouse emissions and reduced the greenhouse intensity of the Australian economy. No fair-minded person could say that the Australian government does not have a very strong plan on water. We had the announcement most recently of a $10 billion package for the Murray-Darling addressing the infrastructure and also addressing the purchase of water rights. We have a climate change plan—so does Labor; ours is better. We have a water plan—so does Labor; ours is better. The difference in approach is that the government acts and the Labor Party talks. The Labor Party solution to climate change is to have a summit—an old favourite of Bob Hawke.

Looking at the specific issue of climate change, projections released in November 2005 show that Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions for the upcoming period, 2008-12, will be 108 per cent of the 1990 levels. That is our Kyoto target. That is what we committed to at the conference in 1997. We will have reduced emissions by 85 million tonnes by 2010. As the minister at the dispatch box, Mr Turnbull, said, this is equivalent to all of the emissions from the entire Australian transport sector. Had the Australian government not taken action, emissions would be 123 per cent above the 1990 levels; they are now 108 per cent. During the 20 years from 1990 to 2010 the economy will have doubled while the greenhouse intensity of the economy will have fallen by 43 per cent.

The government has also had a number of initiatives to be on the front foot on climate change. The Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate incorporates a number of the major emitters, which Kyoto does not. The weakness of Kyoto is that China, India and other developing countries are not part of it. This initiative also looks at technological solutions to address the whole issue of climate change. The message on Kyoto is that the Australian government, the Howard government, has acted and is on track with its Kyoto targets. The government takes this issue seriously, and it always has.

The issue of water is especially prominent. We have had two severe droughts in the last five years. Last month there was the announcement of a $10 billion national water plan. This has been very well received in South Australia, and it has been well received by my constituents. I am disappointed that the Premier of South Australia has thought that an independent commission would be a better model. He cited the Reserve Bank of Australia as a preferred model. However, I know that the Reserve Bank take their decisions on the Australian economy as an aggregate. The advantage for South Australia with the federal government having a say is that South Australia has 23 members in the federal parliament and, in my experience, they have always been strong advocates for issues which concern South Australia, such as the wine industry, the car industry and the Murray. One of the problems concerning water has been the lack of investment in infrastructure. This is something that the Leader of the Opposition knows a bit about. We have never heard the full story of why the Wolffdene Dam in Queensland was not built and what role the Leader of the Opposition had in that. He was the policy tsar of the Goss government when it made the decision not to build that dam, which has now led to Brisbane’s current problems.

This is a very important MPI. It was an opportunity for the Leader of the Opposition to make his case for a change of government, but he has squibbed it. If you look at the different governments in Australia in 1949, 1972, 1975, 1983 and 1996, you will see governments that were not managing the economy or national security. Those governments lost the confidence of the Australian people. The feeling I get from my constituents is that they view this government as a strong manager of the economy. They broadly agree with us on national security. Those are the two foundations for any Australian government. The Labor Party have no proposals to do them better. They have not made their case. (Time expired)

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