Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Every benchmark of a bad government was set by the Rudd government. Members will recall GroceryWatch and Fuelwatch and pink batts—the list goes on. Now every one of those bad government benchmarks has been exceeded by the Gillard government in 12 months. People will recall that the current Prime Minister was part of the so-called gang of four in the Rudd government—she was one of Prime Minister Rudd's trusted lieutenants and she was the Deputy Prime Minister. So every failing of the Rudd government can be laid at the door of this Prime Minister. And, now, she has her own litany of failures and failings that make this one of the most incompetent governments in the history of Australia.

The Prime Minister has taken incompetence to a new low. After 12 months the Australian people are less confident, they are more concerned and they are understandably confused about the direction Australia is heading under this government. Recently a survey was undertaken by JWS Research asking Australian people to nominate the best governments in the last 30 years and 96 per cent of the people surveyed named any government but the Gillard government. That means that four per cent of those surveyed gave the Gillard government a tick—even fewer people than think Elvis Presley is still alive.

Twelve months ago, on fundamental injustice day, Deputy Prime Minister Gillard betrayed her leader—the man that she said she would support, the leader to whom she pledged loyalty. Twelve months on from fundamental injustice day, you know how badly this government is travelling when the Labor Party starts leaking its own research against its leader. This is what happened to Prime Minister Rudd—they started leaking against him, to undermine his standing. It is happening again with Prime Minister Gillard. Today, on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald, an article by Peter Hartcher states:

After a year as Prime Minister, Julia Gillard has failed to establish any sort of positive relationship with the Australian people, according to the Labor Party's own research.

Gillard is seen as cold and untrustworthy, still haunted by the way she took the job by deposing the man to whom she had endlessly pledged loyalty, Kevin Rudd.

By overthrowing Rudd, she created an emotional starting point for public assessment. This was compounded by her broken promise—'there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead'—to entrench a dominant image of dishonesty.

The Prime Minister said that she had to depose Kevin Rudd because the government had lost its way—the government of which she was Deputy Prime Minister; the government of which she was part of the gang of four. But she said it had lost its way, that it had gone off track. With her characteristic arrogance, she said she had to take control. She named three issues—first, the mining tax. You might recall that when the gang of four first announced the resource super profits tax, so little did the then Deputy Prime Minister understand mining companies that she claimed that domestic mining companies paid an effective company tax rate of 17 per cent and overseas companies paid 13 per cent. She said that was not a fair share, and that was why they were moving to introduce the resource super profits tax. She said the reason for the super profits tax was that mining companies were paying 13 per cent and 15 per cent tax, and then she said:

These are the cold, hard facts—the truth.

That was a lie. That was not true. This Prime Minister has form. In fact, Australian Taxation Office statistics show that mining companies pay effectively 30 per cent and 41 per cent when royalties are included, and overseas multinationals pay something like 42 per cent or 43 per cent. So the reason she gave for the mining tax was in fact a lie. Then she did a deal with three of the 3,000 mining companies. But, having done the deal, she then tried to renege on it and say that they would not get the royalties set off against the mining tax. She tried to renege on a deal she did with the people in order to take over from Prime Minister Rudd. Then there is sovereign risk—

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