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

Members are interjecting asking about the mining tax. On page 13 of today's Australian Financial Review we see 'Big miner prefers Africa to Australia'. The article says that the government's mining tax:

… has made Australia a more unpredictable investment destination for coal producers than African countries like Mozambique …

The head of Brazilian miner Vale said:

Australia is becoming harder because you cannot predict what will happen.

In Africa I know what the challenges are …

The article goes on:

He said an unpredictable investment environment in Australia was the 'main risk' …

He cited the minerals resource rent tax and the carbon tax. Who would have thought that sovereign risk and Australia could be said in the same sentence? Under this government sovereign risk is mentioned all the time.

The second issue that the Prime Minister said she had to fix was asylum seekers. The disastrous policy embraced by the Rudd government which has seen the people smugglers back in business was in fact designed by this Prime Minister when she was the opposition spokesperson on border protection and immigration. The Rudd government embraced her policy and we have seen an explosion in the people-smuggling trade. She said she was going to fix this explosion in the people-smuggling trade by having a detention centre in East Timor. Problem: she had not told the East Timorese government about it. Then, when the controversy broke out, she tried to say that she did not mean East Timor after all. She did mean East Timor! No wonder Laurie Oakes called her 'silly and slippery and slimy and shifty'. He summed her up all right.

Do you recall that we could not have the detention centre—paid for by the Australian taxpayers—reopened because Nauru was not a signatory to the UN convention on refugees? This Prime Minister takes the Australian people for mugs. What does she announce? An asylum seeker swap with Malaysia, which is not a signatory to the UN convention on refugees. What a great deal—a five-to-one asylum seeker swap—from the so-called great negotiator. What a deal for Australia! The Malaysian deal, like the East Timor deal, reminds me of Monty Python's parrot—'not dead; just resting'. This Prime Minister could not negotiate a deal with countries in our region because she has shown such arrogance towards them.

The third issue was climate change. Her promise to the Australian people was that a lasting community consensus would be obtained. What did she do? She trashed that immediately. She promised a citizens assembly, and, because it was such a ridiculous idea and she was so embarrassed by it, she ran away from it and made out that she had not announced it at all. In her election policy—and this will ring in the ears of the Australian people for decades to come; this statement has defined this Prime Minister—she said, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' That has made her one of the most untrustworthy people in Australian public life. She has no mandate to introduce a carbon tax. She has shown no respect for the Australian people in relation to it.

Now we have another debacle in the live cattle trade. By panicking, overreacting and putting in place a total ban, she has managed to offend Indonesia, one of our closest neighbours; she has managed to put the livelihoods of cattle families in the north of Australia at risk; and she has managed to damage one of Australia's most significant exports.

What about the NBN? It is a $50 billion government monopoly that will not give taxpayers value for money. Consumers will not get cheaper broadband and we will not get the benefits of competition between technologies or competition between tele­communications companies.

What about her signature policy, Building the Education Revolution? There have been billions of dollars wasted—sheer incompetence—building canteens that you cannot even fit a pie warmer into.

Then there is the state of the budget. The Labor Party inherited zero government debt. The Rudd government ran it up. The Gillard government have taken government debt to over $100 billion. As for the surplus, they have never delivered a surplus and they will not deliver a surplus. Over four budgets, the cumulative deficit is $150 billion.

This government is defined by panic, indecision, incompetence and untrust­worthiness. No wonder the Prime Minister has imposed a gag order on the ministers, when ministers say things like:

"Kevin's polling wasn't as bad as Julia's is right now and I think a lot of Australians still love him. They probably think he was hard done by. Let's face it, we could do worse and we are."

(Time expired)

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