Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The point I am making is that this government, in its late conversion to the interests of those low- and middle-income earners who it purports to represent, is on course and on par to continue the deceptions that it has played upon the Australian public for far too long. I make the same point that has been made in this debate by previous opposition speakers that we do not live by bread alone, that values matter. This bill represents the worst of values, in the same way as this government has corrupted the political process in so many other areas. As I was saying of Abu Ghraib—because the government certainly does not want to know—last night there was a clear accusation, unanswered, that this government was aware of shocking abuses occurring in detention facilities before pictures were in our newspapers, and it gave an untruthful account of those matters to the public in the parliament. It has not acknowledged it; it has not come clean. It is on a par with the ‘children overboard’ incident, it is on a par with the account the government gave us about the venture into Iraq, it is on a par with its advertising about people’s rights being protected by law in industrial relations and it is on a par with its complicity in a whole range of other areas of untruth. It is an accurate reflection of the moral vacuity that this government reached when it dealt with refugee policies and the death penalty, where it has failed to stand up on a simple, straightforward basis that Australians should never be complicit in carrying out the death penalty. The Australian public is beginning to wake up to the fact that this government, on a whole range of issues, exercises its rule with a moral blindfold.

Similarly, the short term has always been privileged over the long term. This legislation is short term. It provides welcome measures to those who need tax relief at the bottom end, but had it not distorted the benefits that had been given in budget after budget—privileging those at the apex of its political power base rather than spreading benefits through the community—we would not have a community as resigned to the ugliness of politics in Australia and as ready to consider a change of government as we presently have. We need a change of government to one that can look forward to the large challenges that our nation faces. Climate change is not merely an economic issue. There is no doubt that it is an economic issue. That has been demonstrated by the Stern report. Even the hard-headed of those who have been critical in the past have come to realise that the science is so persuasive that there is no alternative but to accept it. Now those leaders in the economic profession recognise that the failure to act in a responsible way will bring about long-term economic costs.

Climate change is also a moral question, because those who have the greatest capacity to give leadership are those in the privileged First World countries of the United States and Australia. And there too we have been complicit with the deniers—those who have wished the issue away, those who, in the beginning, lined up with the economic interests who wanted no change and persuaded this government that it was something they could turn a blind eye to and ignore—that we need not sign up to Kyoto, that we need not have effective agreements transcending national boundaries and that we could sit out this dance on climate change. Of course, again the chickens are coming home to roost.

So why would the public give credit to the government for bringing in these welcome tax cuts? The government is rather hoping that the opposition will oppose these measures. Of course we will not. I understand that the shadow Treasurer has said in this debate that he would have thought the Treasurer would welcome Labor’s unqualified support for these tax cuts but ‘like an inebriated nightclub goer he is wandering the streets desperately wanting to pick a fight’. How sad it is that our political dialogue and discourse has come down to this. How sad it is that this government, which has had the benefit of benign economic circumstances for a long time, has been so reduced in its political authority that it is wandering around the streets, like that street slugger, looking for a fight on an issue that we have been advocating for years. And how pathetic is the idea that we would steal the government’s clothing! When the government, in its year of desperation, is choosing at last to follow the recommendations that the opposition has been putting to it—spending some of the largesse on those who most truly need it—it is the most extraordinary perversion of truth to say that Labor is copying the government. I find that so sad.

The public is ready for change. All these things add up together: the government’s inhospitable and foolish indifference to the long-term challenges we face on skills, climate change and the great challenges of the future; the government’s privileging of the very rich, its strongest support base, against the broad base of the community; and the government’s failure to act in the national interest at a time when its coffers are overflowing with money. These are things that are leading to judgements in the Bulletin poll today. On the question ‘Do you feel better off now than before John Howard was elected Prime Minister?’ 35.6 per cent said no and 32.6 per cent said yes—in a period of economic prosperity, what a condemnation. On the question ‘Do you think Australia is better off now than before John Howard was elected Prime Minister?’ over one-third say no—despite a decade where the most benign international economic circumstances exist. What a condemnation! And it is so well deserved. (Time expired)

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